Comments on Updating the locate database in Mac OS X

Telmo Dias commented on Updating the locate database in Mac OS X

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 21:43:28 GMT

Thank you very much!

JeffRichards commented on Updating the locate database in Mac OS X

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:08:12 GMT

This is the reason to love the internet, You can read through the man pages (which does tell you how to do this), or just do a simple search and BANGO, you have your answer.

thanks!

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Batuhan commented on Updating the locate database in Mac OS X

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 14:55:00 GMT

Thanks!

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xenon commented on Updating the locate database in Mac OS X

Wed, 28 May 2008 11:39:34 GMT

thanks man!

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Si commented on Updating the locate database in Mac OS X

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 21:31:35 GMT

Hi Neil. Thanks for the post, it worked for me. Now I just have to cron the command. I really love your blog's theme, by the way!

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dan commented on Updating the locate database in Mac OS X

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:00:16 GMT

Thanks, didn't want to wait for Saturday at 4:30AM!

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Jay commented on Updating the locate database in Mac OS X

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:31:40 GMT

I would highly recommend chmod'ing your locate binary and database so that only root has access to perform locate searches. As it says in Leopard when you perform the initial locate database creation: "This WILL reveal all filenames on your machine to all login users, which is a security risk."

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Neil Ang commented on Updating the locate database in Mac OS X

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:06:49 GMT

Shlomo – I'm the only user on my computer, so I didn't consider this as a problem.

Off the top of my head, there are 2 options that come to mind:

The comment by Tony Arnold (above) explains how you can associate the locate database with spotlight. This might give you the desired effect.
Your error occurs on line 89, which is when it trys to write to the file /var/db/locate.database. You could try and chmod this file so your user account has write permission, and try again.

N.B. I've never tested these options, and don't know that the outcome will be. Only try them if you are confident you won't break anything. Please let me know if these do work out for you, thanks.

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Shlomo commented on Updating the locate database in Mac OS X

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:12:03 GMT

I get the following warning:

shlomo$ sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb Password: ******** >>> WARNING >>> Executing updatedb as root. This WILL reveal all filenames >>> on your machine to all login users, which is a security risk.

When I leave off the "sudo" then, after about ten minutes, I get:

/usr/libexec/locate.updatedb: line 89: /var/db/locate.database: Permission denied

So how do I index only what my user can see but still write to the db file?

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f1Sh commented on Updating the locate database in Mac OS X

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 15:32:29 GMT

Very nice hint! Thanks for the update, it made me crazy to look for the reason!

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