mlocate 0.15 review
Downloadmlocate is a new locate implementation
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mlocate is a new locate implementation. The 'm' stands for "merging": updatedb reuses the existing database to avoid rereading most of the file system, which makes updatedb faster and does not trash the system caches as much.
The locate(1) utility is intended to be completely compatible to slocate.
Eeach time, a computer was booted into single-user mode and after one updatedb run data was collected using slabtop and free. The measurement method is admittedly crude, but I think the numbers represent reality quite well.
slocate 1m32.84 0.704 2.045 134337 170778 85972 8268
mlocate, 1st 1m11.65 0.214 0.908 17766 15642 78452 21340
mlocate, 2nd 37.64 0.105 0.289 17776 15639 33996 21336
real, user, system
as reported by time
dentry, inode
number of active objects in dentry_cache and ext3_inode_cache, as reported by slabtop
buffers, cached
size of disk buffers and page cache, as reported by free
mlocate has two rows because the first run needs to rescan the whole file system, while the subsequent runs can reuse most of the original database.
What's New in This Release:
updatedb now uses /proc/self/mounts or /proc/mounts if available.
A test suite was added, and some typos were fixed.
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