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.
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.