3

Having indexed external drives using updatedb -l 0 -o db_file -U source_directory I wonder whether there is already a (GUI) browser like Nautilus to navigate offline through the indexed files.

Note: locate -d DB . gives the whole list of files.

Plus: What format are the DBs -- sqlite?

Seth
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type
  • 3,247

1 Answers1

5

I'm not sure what you mean by offline, but, if you write your db_file to an always mounted location, you should be able to search it even if the indexed drive is not mounted.

The DBs are mlocate format, and don't seem to have enough extra information to be worth a GUI. Here's what I did to investigate (Use the Source, Luke!):

# Where is the locate executable?
type -p locate
# What type of file is it?
file $( type -p locate )
# follow the links
file /etc/alternatives/locate
# 
file /usr/bin/mlocate
# Which package owns /usr/bin/mlocate?
dpkg -S /usr/bin/mlocate
# I keep sources in this directory tree
cd src
# install the apt-src package
sudo apt-get install apt-src
# get the source for mlocate
apt-src install mlocate
# inspect mlocate
cd mlocate-0.23.1/
ls
ls src
less src/*
ls doc
man doc/mlocate.db.5 
# clean up
cd ..
apt-src remove mlocate
waltinator
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