How to Install and Uninstall mlocate Package on Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri)

Last updated: May 16,2024

1. Install "mlocate" package

This is a short guide on how to install mlocate on Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri)


    
        
            $
        

        
            
                sudo apt update
            
                    
    
    Copied


    
        
            $
        

        
            
                sudo apt install
            
                        
                mlocate
            
                    
    
    Copied

2. Uninstall "mlocate" package

Learn how to uninstall mlocate on Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri):


    
        
            $
        

        
            
                sudo apt remove
            
                        
                mlocate
            
                    
    
    Copied


    
        
            $
        

        
            
                sudo apt autoclean && sudo apt autoremove
            
                    
    
    Copied

3. Information about the mlocate package on Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri)

Package: mlocate
Architecture: amd64
Version: 0.26-5ubuntu1
Priority: optional
Section: utils
Origin: Ubuntu
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers
Original-Maintainer: Tollef Fog Heen
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Installed-Size: 276
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14), adduser
Suggests: nocache
Conflicts: findutils (<= 4.2.31-1), slocate (<= 3.1-1.1)
Filename: pool/main/m/mlocate/mlocate_0.26-5ubuntu1_amd64.deb
Size: 50232
MD5sum: c8a943175a57a849202c54172fb15956
SHA1: 1a9cfc3016f9c1929bb98fd7fe2fff61ec1e8d05
SHA256: bf7bf66386dddf2511f3606f72f81cb27bab0a8130dff82662f3d3237b12c061
SHA512: 13beaa7467528b12e36be065ac51b5e2c2b731b5c4d160858016b4a72e371825f77d6cdb2383ea894524c9b7a70fad5b2fcd84bc56bc6ea82fd45dbb9f3bab9b
Homepage: https://pagure.io/mlocate
Description-en: quickly find files on the filesystem based on their name
mlocate is a new implementation of locate, a tool to find files
anywhere in the filesystem based on their name, using a fixed pattern
or a regular expression. Unlike other tools like find(1), locate uses
a previously created database to perform the search, allowing queries
to execute much faster. This database is updated periodically from
cron.
.
Several implementations of locate exist: the original implementation
from GNU's findutils, slocate, and mlocate. The advantages of mlocate
are:
.
* it indexes all the filesystem, but results of a search will only
include files that the user running locate has access to. It does
this by updating the database as root, but making it unreadable for
normal users, who can only access it via the locate binary. slocate
does this as well, but not the original locate.
.
* instead of re-reading all the contents of all directories each time
the database is updated, mlocate keeps timestamp information in its
database and can know if the contents of a directory changed without
reading them again. This makes updates much faster and less demanding
on the hard drive. This feature is only found in mlocate.
.
Installing mlocate will change the /usr/bin/locate binary to point to
mlocate via the alternatives mechanism. After installation, you may
wish to run /etc/cron.daily/mlocate by hand to create the database,
otherwise mlocate won't work until that script is run from cron itself
(since mlocate does not use the same database file as standard locate).
Also, you may wish to remove the "locate" package in order not to have
two different database files updated regularly on your system.
Description-md5: 34e9c00f37885dbcdfb61296f24c84df
Task: kubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-full, ubuntustudio-desktop