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I wish to have the command locate in ubuntu 12.04 (which is used for finding files. I believe there is such a command but I cannot see it in ubuntu 12.04 Is it part of any package?

Evandro Silva
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JVIyer
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    Try using this command: sudo apt-get install locate. – Evandro Silva Nov 10 '12 at 20:24
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    For the future: if you're looking for a program and don't know the package, install apt-file: sudo apt-get install apt-file and search for the program using apt-file: apt-file search /usr/bin/locate. – hnasarat Nov 10 '12 at 20:57
  • In a standard Ubuntu install this often isn't needed - if you type a command on the command-line that Ubuntu doesn't know, it'll often suggest which package to install to get that command. Come to mention it, I think locate is already installed in a standard Ubuntu install anyway, so maybe this doesn't help. – thomasrutter May 28 '13 at 03:15
  • this is actually an unfortunately perpetually useful question (and not at all a "just install it" question), as this particular utility keeps changing names for whatever reason (and has cross-platform variations). There's locate that keeps dis-/re-appearing, and plocate, which (arguably) might be an improved (or the same as) locate, and there's mlocate which might be its own thing or just a dummy package forplocate or locate but now seems to be gone, and wasn't there iir a slocate at some point? aaaack – michael Jan 12 '24 at 04:06

2 Answers2

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sudo apt-get install mlocate should install the 'locate' command.

mlocate maintains a database of all your files and is re-indexed once a day by default. If you want it to re-index immediately then run sudo updatedb from the command line.

If you get a cannot stat error when you run locate, then you need to run sudo updatedb to populate the database, just as if you wanted to re-index immediately.

From Ubuntu 22.04 onwards, mlocate is a transitional dummy package that installs plocate, so you can run sudo apt-get install plocate instead to install plocate directly.

muru
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Thomas Ward
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    I believe that the mlocate package installs a mlocate job in /etc/cron.daily which runs updatedb daily. – mfisch Nov 11 '12 at 02:20
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    Just after you do that, if you try to call locate, you will get the following error: "locate: can not stat () `/var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db': No such file or directory". To solve that, please refer to @enxotib response in: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26188/how-do-i-enable-locate-and-queue-the-database-to-be-built – Ramon Araujo May 12 '14 at 04:02
  • You probably want to run sudo updatedb after installing mlocate, since the search database needs to be optimized for first time use. – IgorGanapolsky Apr 10 '16 at 20:48
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    If you're on CentOS/RHEL/Amazon Linux, use sudo yum install mlocate to install it. Also the same, run sudo updatedb to initialize the database for the first time. – ADTC May 06 '18 at 00:42
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    Warning: At least on pop_os! 22.04 mlocate is a transitional dummy package to plocate, which have some advantages but have fewer features (like --transliterate) – Pablo Bianchi Nov 22 '22 at 22:57
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    note that PopOS is not Ubuntu, and this is a 10 year old post. – Thomas Ward Nov 23 '22 at 00:34
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sudo apt install plocate

Use this to install locate command in 22.04

plocate is better than mlocate

martinho
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