Bug 186540 - request: could mlocate be updated to use inotify?
Summary: request: could mlocate be updated to use inotify?
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED CANTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: mlocate
Version: 5
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Miloslav Trmač
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2006-03-24 08:26 UTC by James Hunt
Modified: 2007-11-30 22:11 UTC (History)
0 users

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2006-03-24 14:02:21 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


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Description James Hunt 2006-03-24 08:26:01 UTC
Description of problem:

Could mlocate be updated to use inotify to remove the need for even running
updatedb?


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


How reproducible:


Steps to Reproduce:
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Expected results:


Additional info:

Comment 1 Miloslav Trmač 2006-03-24 14:02:21 UTC
Thanks for the suggestion, but inotify isn't really suitable for such global
watching.

First, inotify doesn't work over network filesystems, so it isn't possible to
guarantee instantaneous update in general, and a periodic scan is necessary
anyway.

Second, inodes of all watched directories have to be kept in memory; on my
laptop that would be roughly 16000 inodes, which is about 10 MB of memory
wasted for locate; consider a file server with a few terabytes of storage.
(To prevent this pinning of kernel memory, inotify has a configurable limit
on the number of watches, which is 8192 by default.)


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