Bug 430370

Summary:	No simple way to disable mlocate
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	JW <ohtmvyyn>
Component:	mlocate	Assignee:	Miloslav Trmač <mitr>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	8
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2008-01-27 19:09:24 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description JW 2008-01-27 00:21:47 UTC

Description of problem:
In previous versions of mlocate there was an UPDATE_DAILY variable in
/etc/updatedb.conf which could be used to control whether daily cron entry runs.
 But not only have spaces been added to the variables in /etc/updatedb.conf (so
no longer sourceable by shell scripts), but the variable has been removed, and
the cron.daily entry no longer checks whether it should run or not.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
mlocate-0.18-1

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. read /etc/updatedb.conf
2. read /etc/cron.d/mlocate.cron
3.
  
Actual results:
mlocate cannot be fully controlled via main configuration file

Expected results:
should not have to look in multiple places to configure mlocate

Additional info:
Windowesque hacks such as mlocate should not exist. Searching of filesystems
with 'find' should be made faster.

Comment 1 Miloslav Trmač 2008-01-27 19:09:24 UTC

Thanks for your report.

> In previous versions of mlocate there was an UPDATE_DAILY variable in
> /etc/updatedb.conf which could be used to control whether daily cron entry runs.
>  But not only have spaces been added to the variables in /etc/updatedb.conf (so
> no longer sourceable by shell scripts), but the variable has been removed, and
> the cron.daily entry no longer checks whether it should run or not.
UPDATE_DAILY was a rather horrible hack.  As you noticed, the parsing rules for
updatedb.conf and shell scripts are different - so reading updatedb.conf using
(source ...) is simply incorrect.

> mlocate cannot be fully controlled via main configuration file
> 
> Expected results:
> should not have to look in multiple places to configure mlocate
Actually, you can achieve results very similar to "UPDATE_DAILY=no" by adding
"/" to PRUNEPATHS - or by not installing mlocate in the first place.  I don't
think a separate UPDATE_DAILY variable is necessary.

> Additional info:
> Windowesque hacks such as mlocate should not exist. Searching of filesystems
> with 'find' should be made faster.
In the ideal world, yes.  In practice, making (find) faster would require
keeping a database similar to mlocate.db always up-to-date, which has
unacceptable overhead for many users.