HOW to turn off mlocate

If like me you use the find command rather than locate, you will not see any benefit from the annoying process, that runs at the most inconvenient times, called mlocate.update. This process is building an index of the files on your server or PC. If you do not use the locate command turn it off, it’s of no use to you.

mlocate.update runs as a cron job and can therefore be disabled simply by removing the execute permission on the file /etc/cron.daily/mlocate

sudo chmod -x /etc/cron.daily/mlocate

You can re-enable it with

sudo chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/mlocate

The config file for this process is /etc/updatedb.conf and I doubt there is any thing in there you will want to change.

To remove it completely from your machine use and save 300K of disk space 🙂

sudo apt-get purge mlocate

3 thoughts on “HOW to turn off mlocate

  1. Warp

    Funny how different people use their systems 😉
    For I install locate/mlocate in every distro I use!

    [Imported from previous blog]

    Reply
  2. Jon

    Nice article that gets to the bottom of why mlocate really should be retired at this point

    How much CO2 is being put into the atmosphere because this is still standard in many distros?

    Reply

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