Debian 12: /etc/updatedb.conf and it's man page are missing

[Roger Price]

Debian 12 doesnŽt include the /etc/updatedb.conf file. I use locate to find
things in /mnt. This needs a modified PRUNEPATHS declaration, so I copied an
/etc/updatedb.conf which doesnŽt prune /mnt from a Debian 11 installation.

I am surprised to see no /etc/updatedb.conf in Debian 12. Is this deliberate?

The man (5) page for updatedb.conf is also missing.

Roger

[Charles Curley]

On Mon, 17 Mar 2025 17:51:33 +0100 (CET)

Debian 12 doesn´t include the /etc/updatedb.conf file.

***@hawk:~$ apt-file search updatedb.conf
plocate: /etc/updatedb.conf
plocate: /usr/share/man/man5/updatedb.conf.5.gz
***@hawk:~$ cat /etc/debian_version
12.10
***@hawk:~$ apt show plocate
Package: plocate
Version: 1.1.18-1
Priority: optional
Section: utils
Maintainer: Steinar H. Gunderson <***@debian.org>
Installed-Size: 535 kB
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.34), libgcc-s1 (>= 3.0), libstdc++6 (>= 12), liburing2 (>= 2.3), libzstd1 (>= 1.5.2), adduser
Suggests: systemd-sysv | powermgmt-base, systemd-sysv | nocache
Breaks: mlocate (<< 1.1.7)
Replaces: mlocate (<< 1.1.7)
Homepage: https://plocate.sesse.net/
Download-Size: 125 kB
APT-Manual-Installed: no
APT-Sources: http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm/main amd64 Packages
Description: much faster locate
plocate is a locate(1) based on posting lists, giving much faster searches
on a much smaller index. It is a drop-in replacement for mlocate in nearly
all aspects, and is fast on SSDs and non-SSDs alike.

***@hawk:~$

[Roger Price]

Post by Charles Curley
Package: plocate

...

Post by Charles Curley
Replaces: mlocate (<< 1.1.7)

...

Post by Charles Curley
Description: much faster locate

I removed my /etc/updatedb.conf, uninstalled package locate, installed package
plocate, and ran updatedb as root. The command locate is now defined as
/usr/bin/locate -> /etc/alternatives/locate* -> /usr/bin/plocate*

I didnÂŽt need to modify /etc/updatedb.conf, PRUNEPATHS already allows /mnt .

It looks as if package locate could be retired. Roger

[Jonathan Dowland]

Post by Roger Price
I removed my /etc/updatedb.conf, uninstalled package locate, installed
package plocate, and ran updatedb as root. The command locate is now
defined as /usr/bin/locate -> /etc/alternatives/locate* ->
/usr/bin/plocate*
I didn´t need to modify /etc/updatedb.conf, PRUNEPATHS already allows /mnt .
It looks as if package locate could be retired. Roger

The GNU locate program, built from source package "findutils", was
originally shipped in binary package "findutils", which is an Essential
package. Therefore, everybody had GNU locate/updatedb/updatedb.conf,
until it was split off into binary package "locate" (which is not
Essential). (#448523)

/etc/updatedb.conf was removed around the same time as the package
split. The contents of it migrated into the cron job definition instead.
As it happens, GNU updatedb never actually read updatedb.conf, so it was
mis-named: it was always only sourced by the cron job. (#342713) (Note
that, for plocate, updatedb.conf *is* read by updatedb.)

Making GNU locate optional opened up the opportunity for alternative
implementations of locate/updatedb. For a while there was "mlocate", but
Steinar H. Gunderson wrote "plocate" as a much faster replacement. It's
the de-facto recommended implementation of find/locate for Debian (but
no find/locate implementation is Essential anymore)