'updatedb' : is it really mandatory, can I switch it off and how ?!

[Trouilliez Vincent]

> Recording of file accesses can be stopped by adding the "noatime" option
> to the filesystems in /etc/fstab. 


Yes, someone on the forum told me the same. It did improve things.


> One other culprit of frequent disk activity is postfix. If you are not
> using mail on your local machine, you may want to try turning that off
> to see if that quietens your system:
> 
> $ sudo /etc/init.d/postfix stop
> 
> That will only stop it until the next reboot. If you find that does make
> a difference for you, you may want to investigate an alternative mail
> server that does not write to disk as often as postfix.


I tried killing many processes, including that one, but can't remember
it lead to any "audible" improvement.

Also, forgive my ignorance, but if this is a mail 'server', how comes I
have it installed ? I mean I only have basic desktop computer, just need
a client not a server !
How come they put such a useless (for 99% of ubuntu users) process, but
didn't even put the necessary tools to compile gnome applications, which
MUCH more people would be likely to do, whenever they can't find it in
Sypnaptic and have no choice but compile the sources.
Also, I remember once, I switched to tty1 console, logged as root, and
postfix told me I had new mail ! How can that be, I didn't even know of
his existence, so no way it knows my e-mail address and log-in info
etc !? Weird.  Or is it just 'local' mail ?

Anyway, I have just tried the 'locate' command, and the 'tab' and
'double tab' tricks, and I am already very fond of them, so will just
leave updatedb alone I think.
I looked in /etc/crontab and it lets you program exactly when you want
jobs to be started. So I think once I have made my PC silent (laptop
drive + silent power supply), I will be able to let it run 24 hours a
day (currently the noise keeps me from sleeping so must switch it
off !), and simply tell cron to run updatedb at night, when I am not
using it.


Vince
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