Re: [ProgSoc] find process in linux

[jedd@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au]

 Victor writes :

> My linux (debian 2) machine quite frequently starts upa a 'find' process
> with owner 'nobody'. This slows the system down considerably for quite a
> while. Anyone have any ideas what this is,and if I should take steps to
> stop it happening (and how one would do this)?

 Ahh.. Debian.  Good man.  :)

 I suspect that it's the updatedb utility.  Every day, though it
 should be, I thought, about 6:30am, updatedb will launch (check
 your /etc/cron.tab and/or /etc/cron.daily/ directory), and go
 through your entire set of file systemS (!), and collate a nice
 little flat database of your filenames.  It stores this in (from
 memory) /var/lib/updatedb (or thereabouts).  When you use the
 'locate <filename>' utility, all that does is searches through
 said database (so it's up to 24 hours out of date).

 My gut feel is your clock is wrong and/or you are using your
 computer at silly times of the day (read 7am) and/or you haven't
 told updatedb.conf (in /etc) to not search ncpfs, nfs, iso9660,
 etc, file systems.  That can slow you down a smidge... (speaking
 from experience - since updatedb.conf lists exclusions, rather than
 inclusions, I didn't notice immediately that my little P75 at work
 was trying to examine about a dozen 4gig Netware3 boxes, all at
 the ends of 64k links in different countries - trez embarrassing. :)
 
 Jedd.
--
You are subscribed to the progsoc mailing list. To unsubscribe, send a
message containing "unsubscribe" to progsoc-request@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au.
If you are having trouble, ask owner-progsoc@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au for help.

This list is archived at <http://www.progsoc.uts.edu.au/lists/progsoc/>