Troy Dawson wrote:
> Hi,
> I've seen the whole thread and it seems that everyone has missed what is 
> already there.  (It's in the release notes and on the web page.)
> https://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/4x/features/tweaks
> There is a program called
> 
> SL_enable_slocate_cron
> 
> That turns on the updatedb (actually, it makes slocate work, which does 
> the updatedb updating).  So all you need to do is
> 
>   yum install SL_enable_slocate_cron
> 
> and then slocate (which runs updatedb) will run.  If you uninstall it, 
> it put's it back the way it started.


Troy thanks for this information. Actually I hadn't come across the above link before.

However I did

[root@localhost ~]# yum info SL_enable_slocate_cron
Setting up Repos
sl-base                   100% |=========================| 1.1 kB    00:00
sl-errata                 100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
Reading repository metadata in from local files
sl-base   : ################################################## 1502/1502
sl-errata : ################################################## 19/19
Available Packages
Name   : SL_enable_slocate_cron
Arch   : noarch
Version: 1.0
Release: 1
Size   : 2.6 k
Repo   : sl-base
Summary: This modifies the slocate config file, so slocate run's nightly
Description:
  This package changes the setting in updatedb.conf from
DAILY_UPDATE=no to DAILY_UPDATE=yes
This will allow the daily slocate update to run.

[root@localhost ~]#



The "Description" section in the above, mentions that it changes the DAILY_UPDATE value of 
updatedb.conf to "yes", however it is already "yes" in my installation. Does it mean that 
updatedb is already executed once a day in my system? If yes, when exactly?



> p.s. By way of argument as to why RedHat did things that way, it was 
> already discussed  in these e-mails, in that it saves the machine doing 
> those checks on potentially big file systems.
> But what really irks me is that they turned off the 'locate' command, 
> which I use all the time, but left on the makewhatit, which enables the 
> 'man -k' command, which I use rarely.   makewhatis still uses alot of 
> CPU and disk power, especially when it runs on my laptop.  I would have 
> liked to have seen something similar with that.


I do not know much of these, however there is a "locate" command (which looks like it is 
the same with "slocate") in my SL 4.1 installation.