Updatedb - what is it for?

[Joe Potter]

Gábor Iglói wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> My machine sometimes starts to work furiously on the hard drive. So
> I'm curious why. I issued a "top" command and found that the updatedb
> process is working at these times. I haven't meet this thing in
> another distro (maybe it's there too but I didn't noticed it) - so I
> would like to ask: what it is and what it is for? I tried man and
> Google but still not clear what's good in it.
> 

The locate command is much faster and easier than using the find
command. But, the database it uses must be updated. The command for this
is "updatedb" and it is normal to run it as a cron job so the admin does
not have to do so manually.

Regards, Joe