plocate-build(8) System Manager's Manual plocate-build(8)
NAME
plocate-build - generate index for plocate
SYNOPSIS
plocate-build [OPTION]... MLOCATE_DB PLOCATE_DB
DESCRIPTION
plocate-build creates an index from plocate(1) from an index earlier
generated by updatedb(8) from the mlocate(1) package. Most users would
rather want to use plocate's own updatedb(8), which is more direct. If
PLOCATE_DB already exists, it will be overwritten (non-atomically). The
file is created such that it is not world-readable, as the final access
check is done by plocate(1) during the search.
OPTIONS
-b, --block-size SIZE
Create blocks containing SIZE filenames each, compress them to-
gether, and treat them as the same element in the posting lists.
This makes the index smaller (because the compression algorithm
gets more context to work with, and because there are fewer ele-
ments in each posting list), but also makes posting lists less
precise, moving more work to weeding out false positives after
posting list intersection.
Making this number larger will make linear search (for --regex,
or very short patterns) faster, with diminishing returns around
256 filenames per block. However, making it too large will cause
more false positives, reducing overall performance for typical
queries. The default value is 32. Setting it to 1 makes one
(compressed) block per filename.
-p, --plaintext
Treat the input as plain text, with entries delimited by new-
lines, instead of an mlocate database.
-l, --require-visibility FLAG
Set the “require file visibility before reporting it” flag in the
generated database to FLAG. The default is yes, even for an mlo-
cate database with the flag originally set to no (although the
latter may change in the future).
--help Print out usage information, then exit successfully.
--version
Print out version information, then exit successfully.
AUTHOR
Steinar H. Gunderson <steinar+plocate@gunderson.no>
SEE ALSO
plocate(1), /etc/cron.daily/plocate (which is called update-plocate.sh
in the source distribution)
plocate-build Oct 2020 plocate-build(8)
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