How to Install and Uninstall mlocate Package on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus)

Last updated: May 15,2024

1. Install "mlocate" package

This guide covers the steps necessary to install mlocate on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus)


    
        
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                sudo apt update
            
                    
    
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                sudo apt install
            
                        
                mlocate
            
                    
    
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2. Uninstall "mlocate" package

Please follow the step by step instructions below to uninstall mlocate on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus):


    
        
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                sudo apt remove
            
                        
                mlocate
            
                    
    
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                sudo apt autoclean && sudo apt autoremove
            
                    
    
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3. Information about the mlocate package on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus)

Package: mlocate
Priority: standard
Section: utils
Installed-Size: 228
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers
Original-Maintainer: Tollef Fog Heen
Architecture: amd64
Version: 0.26-1ubuntu2
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14), adduser
Conflicts: findutils (<= 4.2.31-1), slocate (<= 3.1-1.1)
Filename: pool/main/m/mlocate/mlocate_0.26-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb
Size: 45394
MD5sum: 8268bcc99c13d5d357d6fb28424c2583
SHA1: f03197fa1a37e708d5090793b2ba4eaf711b1ea0
SHA256: 0999a5631f018cd6ac333e5b069439abeb77c1112727fc32d5f4eb16f8251bda
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:
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* 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.
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* 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
Homepage: http://carolina.mff.cuni.cz/~trmac/blog/mlocate
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Origin: Ubuntu
Supported: 5y
Task: standard