Question

16

How do I reduce the size of mlocate database?

rated 0 times [ 16] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 22309 / 1 Year ago, wed, may 24, 2023, 5:35:01

I'm out of space on /var

  25G   25G     0 100% /var

It looks like mlocate.db is the problem:

# find /var -printf '%s %p

' | sort -nr | head

13140140032 ./lib/mlocate/mlocate.db.cgLMAM

12409839616 ./lib/mlocate/mlocate.db.MqGeqe



# cat /etc/updatedb.conf

PRUNE_BIND_MOUNTS="yes"

PRUNENAMES=".git .bzr .hg .svn"

PRUNEPATHS="/tmp /var/spool /media"

PRUNEFS="NFS nfs nfs4 rpc_pipefs afs binfmt_misc proc smbfs autofs iso9660 ncpfs coda devpts ftpfs devfs mfs shfs sysfs cifs lustre_lite tmpfs usbfs udf"

I don't see anything else to prune. So how can I fix this? Thanks

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algicuade

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2 Years ago

answered 1 Year ago ionash · Accepted Answer

The /var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db.?????? files are leftover temporary files from a (probably) interrupted updatedb run. They don't appear on either of my Ubuntu 11.10 systems, except when updatedb is running. Delete them:

sudo rm -f /var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db.??????

then, to be sure, run

sudo /etc/cron.daily/mlocate