How To Install Locate On CentOS Server

Introduction This how-to will show you how to install locate on a CentOS server. This command is often the easiest and fastest way to find the location of files and directories. This is very useful when you’re working on a Linux system for which you are not well acquainted. When you install mlocate, it will install the two commands locate and updatedb. It will also install a cron job that updates the database daily.

Prerequisites

A server running CentOS. If you do not have a server and need one, BIPmedia.com offers a full line of reliable VPS servers for cloud computing.

Install Locate on CentOS a Cloud Server or VPS

The command to install locate on a CentOS is:

yum install mlocate

You are not able to locate anything yet until you install locate and have updated the database for locate. Run the below command to do this:

updatedb

The cronjob will update the database daily, but if you are ever installing a lot of files and need to search for them, you should use the updatedb command again. Now, you are able to search for locations of files and directories. For example, if you forget the location of index.html you would run the command:

[[email protected] Documents] # locate index.html
/usr/share/cups/www/index.html
/usr/share/cups/www/de/index.html
[[email protected] Documents] # 

Congratulations! You may be interested in using the “find” command alternatively, check out Linux Find Command by searching the BIP media Community Learning Center .