[SOLVED] updatedb to locate

[Relative]

This is a somewhat general Linux question and I haven't been able to resolve it with searches.

I have a separate NTFS partition named 'Common' that is accessible by both Win7 and Mint. I would like to be able to use the 'locate' command to search this partition along with my /home partition.

I see where the update.conf file allows exclusions, but nothing about additions.

Is this possible?

Mike

[xenopeek]

Temporarily mounted filesystems aren't indexed by updatedb nor are FUSE filesystems.

Have you configured /etc/fstab to permanently mount the filesystem? If so, is the mount location under another directory than /mnt and /media as those two directories are only for temporarily mounted filesystems.

If all that is already in place, you likely are using "ntfs-3g" as filesystem type in /etc/fstab. That is a FUSE filesystem, so in any case won't be indexed by updatedb. You either have to change the filesystem type to "ntfs" (the kernel driver which can only reliably read files from NTFS) as that isn't a FUSE filesystem IIRC, or you'd have to remove "fuse" from the PRUNEFS configuration in the updatedb configuration file. As FUSE filesystems are generally used for temporary mounts and for other things besides your NTFS filesystem, there may likely be side effects to this.

You can see examples for setting up /etc/fstab with ntfs-3g and with ntfs here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount ... figuration

[Relative]

This is what the blkid command got me:
Note that /dev/sda10: is the one I wanted to access.

sudo blkid
/dev/sda1: SEC_TYPE="msdos" LABEL="DELLUTILITY" UUID="3030-3030" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="b3a6f9a5-01"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="RECOVERY" UUID="94AA2A65AA2A43D8" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="b3a6f9a5-02"
/dev/sda3: LABEL="TPCW" UUID="C82EA7DD2EA7C334" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="b3a6f9a5-03"
/dev/sda5: LABEL="TPDW" UUID="01CF6849BBFC5010" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="b3a6f9a5-05"
/dev/sda6: LABEL="ThinkPadDriversEW" UUID="4367D098256C049F" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="b3a6f9a5-06"
/dev/sda7: UUID="18b1d16c-d09f-4ef1-9c5e-7d8ac6d8cb64" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="b3a6f9a5-07"
/dev/sda8: UUID="0cf1b6fe-cae8-4ecc-b69b-bdd6c197f5c1" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="b3a6f9a5-08"
/dev/sda9: UUID="e857c971-eb32-4955-a64f-0d8d1a661349" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="b3a6f9a5-09"
/dev/sda10: LABEL="Common" UUID="0DAB072D1F570530" TYPE="ntfs" PTTYPE="dos" PARTUUID="b3a6f9a5-0a"

Common had been in /media/mike/Common

The following is what I added to fstab:
(I used ntfs-3g to enable writing to the files.)

# add Common ntfs partition to enable updatedb and locate to work with it
UUID=0DAB072D1F570530 /home/mike/Common ntfs-3g defaults,windows_names,locale=en_US.utf8 0 0

locate works great now.

Many, many thanks for the solution.

Mike

[Relative]

OK, so locate works great now, but the owner of everything in Common is root and that does me no good at all. How do I change that? 'chown' doesn't seem to do the trick.

Mike

[xenopeek]

Don't know enough about ntfs-3g. Suggest to make a new topic requesting help to set the owner on a ntfs-3g mount.

[ajgringo619]

OK, so locate works great now, but the owner of everything in Common is root and that does me no good at all. How do I change that? 'chown' doesn't seem to do the trick.

Mike

I did this to access my Windows 10 partition, giving myself ownership of the files:

Code: Select all

# Windows partition
UUID=046636D46636C668 /media/Windows ntfs uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=027,fmask=137,windows_names 0 2

[Relative]

Your solution did the trick for me. The only thing I changed was to tie the partition to 'home' to enable 'updatedb' and 'locate' to work searching it. I went with ntfs instead of ntfs-3g. My impression is that ntfs-3g is the latest version but so far ntfs seems to do the job.

Here is what the final addition in fstab for my purposes:

UUID=0DAB072D1F570530 /home/mike/Common ntfs uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=027,fmask=137,windows_names 0 2

Thanks to both ajgringo619 and xenopeek for the help.

Mike