Fail to use “locate”

Question

I have a file named Fubini's_theorem.html under some directory. But both

locate "Fubini's_theorem"

or

locate Fubini

do not return anything.

The file has been there for months, and I am sure it is already in the database used by locate. So I wonder why the search is not successful? Thanks!

My OS is Ubuntu 10.10.

Answer 1

You could also use the find utility:

find / -name Fubini 2> /dev/null

/ to search starting from /
-name Fubini look for a file with "Fubini" in it's name
2> /dev/null redirect errors to /dev/null.

The redirect is useful when searching from root because /proc directories aren't really there. /proc is a virtual filesystem and finding through it is ... well just not right :)

Answer 2

You can use the following command to update the database of file indexes

/usr/bin/updatedb -e /mnt/data,/mnt/files,...

Theoretically this command should be in your crontab so that it's executed periodically. You could check your crontab by running

crontab -l

If it isn't in there you could add it manually.