Why is /var/lib/mlocate.db almost 800 MB?

Question

Can I do something about it? I'm running out of disk space.

May look as a strange question, but: How do you find the file's size? — ulidtko, Jan 28 '11 at 22:58
The database could be stored as a sparse file, and hence real disk usage may differ significantly from that reported by `ls` and `du`. — ulidtko, Jan 28 '11 at 23:07
Also see https://askubuntu.com/questions/268130/can-i-disable-updatedb-mlocate . — Robert Pollak, Aug 31 '21 at 07:18

score 34 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 10 '12 at 19:37

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On one of my systems that acts as a backup server, mlocate.db hit 9GB. The solution was to exclude the backup directories from locate, since I had no need to search them.

I did this by adding the backup directory to PRUNEPATHS in /etc/updatedb.conf.

Running sudo updatedb then reduced it to 1.6MB (and saves a huge amount of time indexing all of those files).

answered Jul 10 '12 at 19:37

user76225

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Perfect, thank you. Just went from 800MB to 100MB, but more importantly, the updatedb command can complete very quickly now, whereas before it was taking days. (Note, however, that it only runs when the computer is not on battery, and it uses low priority IO, according to the script at /etc/cron.daily/mlocate.) – mlissner Apr 19 '18 at 18:06
Wow 9 GB down to 1.6 MB! – WinEunuuchs2Unix May 23 '18 at 02:17

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 03 '11 at 12:50

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If you have lots and lots of files on your machine, you may want to consider pruning some paths from the database. You can do this in /etc/updatedb.conf under PRUNEPATHS. You can also prune file systems (like nfs, if you so desire).

answered Aug 03 '11 at 12:50

Zach Bethel

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Lekensteyn · Answer 3 · 2011-01-28T21:17:47.287

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800MB sounds pretty much. My /var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db is about 8MB only (fresh install on 10.04 release date). You can safely delete it, if you run sudo updatedb, it'll be recreated.

edited Jan 28 '11 at 21:17

answered Jan 28 '11 at 14:07

Lekensteyn

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thanks, that worked. After running sudo updatedb it is now 620MB. edit: oops I read that wrong. 620MB would mean it didn't work (I thought I read KB on my file output). – evencoil Jan 28 '11 at 15:17
How many files do you have? What is your disk size? – Lekensteyn Jan 28 '11 at 20:57
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Is it really that big? Size in MB: 'du -m /var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db' – Jan 28 '11 at 21:12
Also both `du` and `ls` have an `-h` flag ` : -h, --human-readable` `print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)` – belacqua Jan 28 '11 at 22:02
It is really that big...I do have a lot of very small files (related to some data work) across several hard drives, so maybe that is why. edit: I also keep many backups...Is there a way to exclude directories from the indexer? Probably indexing these backups is the big problem. – evencoil Jan 30 '11 at 12:28

score -1 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 28 '11 at 13:41

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Its a database of all files in your root directory. It is used by locate utility. if you delete this file locate will no longer work.

answered Jan 28 '11 at 13:41

binW

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is it really supposed to be that large? – evencoil Jan 28 '11 at 14:04
It should not be that big. Most probably you have lots of files in your home directory. You can erase it and then let the update run again. – user4124 Jan 28 '11 at 14:43
if I erase it will it be recreated automatically at some point? – evencoil Jan 28 '11 at 15:20
it will be recreated when you run "updatedb" command – binW Jan 28 '11 at 16:45
it seems to also be recreated as a daily task? – evencoil Jan 30 '11 at 12:28
there is a cron task in /etc/cron.daily/mlocate that runs updatedb daily – binW Jan 30 '11 at 13:40

Why is /var/lib/mlocate.db almost 800 MB?

4 Answers4