Ben wrote regarding 'RE: [SLE] YAST RPM storage location' on Thu, Aug 19 at 09:42:

I hope this one makes it to the list!!

On 19/08/04 03:12 PM, Steve Kratz wrote:

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Thanks!

By the way-- know of any good CLI "search" programs? I know there's the GUI find, but that doesn't run as root, and didn't let me search for the stash of RPMs...

There are several that do different things. whereis for example looks only for binary files, locate will try and match a string you pass to it, but the most useful is probably find and construct a search query, so "locate rpm | grep yast" will find any rpms within the entire directory structure that have yast in their absoloute path. "find /var -iname rpm" will find anything in /var with rpm in the path. "find /var -iname *.rpm" will find any file ending in rpm in the path.

It's probably worth noting that locate will find files *in the parts of the filesystem that are indexed*, which usually excludes a few parts like /home, some parts of /var, etc. When it works, locate is much faster. When it doesn't work, you need to know that it's not actually searching the *whole* system like "find /" as root will. It's also worth noting that "find /var -iname rpm" will find anything in /var that's case-insensitvely named rpm (RPM, rPm, etc). File.rpm will not be found, nor will arpme.txt. :) "find /var -iname '*rpm*'" will.

There are no real all in one tools within *nix (excluding emacs), instead the OS provides the tools to string together various programs that allow you todo the work of them.

Do one thing, and do it well (and support STDIN/STDOUT, please)... :) --Danny, who should probably do some actual work this morning...

Randall wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] YAST RPM storage location' on Thu, Aug 19 at 10:52:

Danny,

On Thursday 19 August 2004 08:05, Danny Sauer wrote:

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Ben wrote regarding 'RE: [SLE] YAST RPM storage location' on Thu, Aug 19 at 09:42:

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It's probably worth noting that locate will find files *in the parts of the filesystem that are indexed*, which usually excludes a few parts like /home, some parts of /var, etc. When it works, locate is much faster. When it doesn't work, you need to know that it's not actually searching the *whole* system like "find /" as root will.

On my SuSE 9.1 Pro installation, the configuration for building "locatedb" (the database used by the "locate" command) definitely _in_cludes "/home":

% locate /home |egrep '^/home/' |wc -l 5372

Ok, it was just an example - /home is excluded on several of my machines since it's NFS mounted. :) Default locate on 9.1 doesn't include these dirs: UPDATEDB_PRUNEPATHS="/mnt /cdrom /tmp /usr/tmp /var/tmp /var/spool /proc /media" and it only inlcudes those that can be read by the user "nobody." The difference between locate /home and locate /home/ is weird, though. I wish locate would accept regexps, though. I end up piping it through egrep more often than not...

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It's also worth noting that "find /var -iname rpm" will find anything in /var that's case-insensitvely named rpm (RPM, rPm, etc). File.rpm will not be found, nor will arpme.txt. :) "find /var -iname '*rpm*'" will.

I think you must have meant "find /var -iname '*rpm*'".

That's what I typed, isn't it? The first command, from someone else's email, will find files whose exact name is rpm, ignoring case sensetivity. The second example is exactly what you typed, unless my char set's off. :)

Find is very powerful. A bit of studying of the man page will be rewarded.

I find myself using the -exec option often, personally. It's great for fixing permissions and removing backup files, among others... --Danny