updatedb.conf(5) File Formats Manual updatedb.conf(5)
NAME
/etc/updatedb.conf - a configuration file for updatedb(8)
DESCRIPTION
/etc/updatedb.conf is a text file. Blank lines are ignored. A # char-
acter outside of a quoted string starts a comment extending until end of
line.
Other lines must be of the following form:
VARIABLE = "VALUE"
White space between tokens is ignored. VARIABLE is an alphanumeric
string which does not start with a digit. VALUE can contain any charac-
ter except for ". No escape mechanism is supported within VALUE and
there is no way to write VALUE spanning more than one line.
Unknown VARIABLE values are considered an error. The defined variables
are:
PRUNEFS
A whitespace-separated list of file system types (as used in
/etc/mtab) which should not be scanned by updatedb(8). The file
system type matching is case-insensitive. By default, no file
system types are skipped.
When scanning a file system is skipped, all file systems mounted
in the subtree are skipped too, even if their type does not match
any entry in PRUNEFS.
PRUNENAMES
A whitespace-separated list of directory names (without paths)
which should not be scanned by updatedb(8). By default, no di-
rectory names are skipped.
Note that only directories can be specified, and no pattern mech-
anism (e.g. globbing) is used.
PRUNEPATHS
A whitespace-separated list of path names of directories which
should not be scanned by updatedb(8). Each path name must be ex-
actly in the form in which the directory would be reported by lo-
cate(1).
By default, no paths are skipped.
PRUNE_BIND_MOUNTS
One of the strings 0, no, 1 or yes. If PRUNE_BIND_MOUNTS is 1 or
yes, bind mounts are not scanned by updatedb(8). All file sys-
tems mounted in the subtree of a bind mount are skipped as well,
even if they are not bind mounts. As an exception, bind mounts
of a directory on itself are not skipped. Note that Btrfs sub-
volume mounts are handled internally in the kernel as bind mounts
(see btrfs-subvolume(8)), and thus, may get skipped if you have
also mounted the filesystem root itself. To counteract this,
make your root directory a Btrfs subvolume, too.
By default, bind mounts are not skipped.
NOTES
When a directory is matched by PRUNEFS, PRUNENAMES or PRUNEPATHS, updat-
edb(8) does not scan the contents of the directory. The path of the di-
rectory itself is, however, entered in the created database. For exam-
ple, if /tmp is in PRUNEPATHS, locate(1) will not show any files stored
in /tmp, but it can show the /tmp directory. This behavior differs from
traditional locate implementations.
In some updatedb(8) implementations PRUNEPATHS can be used to exclude
non-directory files. This is not the case in this implementation.
/etc/updatedb.conf is a shell script in some implementations, which al-
lows much more flexibility in defining the variables. Equivalent func-
tionality can be achieved by using the command-line options to updat-
edb(8).
AUTHOR
Miloslav Trmac <mitr@redhat.com>
SEE ALSO
locate(1), updatedb(8)
plocate Oct 2020 updatedb.conf(5)
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