updatedb.conf(5)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 char‐
acter 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.
When scanning a file system is skipped, all filesystems mounted
in the subtree are skipped too, even if their type does not
match any entry in PRUNEFS.
PRUNEPATHS
A whitespace-separated list of path names of directories which
should not be scanned by updatedb(8). Each path name must be
exactly in the form in which the directory would be reported by
locate(1).
The default values of both variables are empty.
NOTES
Unlike the traditional behavior of PRUNEFS and PRUNEPATHS, which
excludes the matched directory (or the root of a matched filesystem)
from the created database, the matched directory is entered in the cre‐
ated database. This allows e.g. locate /tmp to find the standard tem‐
porary directories even though their contents are excluded from the
database.
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
allows much more flexibility in defining the variables. Equivalent
functionality can be achieved by using the command-line options to
updatedb(8).
AUTHOR
Miloslav Trmac <mitr@redhat.com>
SEE ALSOlocate(1), updatedb(8)mlocate Jul 2005 updatedb.conf(5)