updatedb.conf(5)

NAME
/etc/updatedb.conf - a configuration file for updatedb(8)

DESCRIPTION
/etc/updatedb.conf is a text file. Blank lines are ignored. A # character outside of a quoted string starts a comment extending until end of line. Other lines must be of the following form:
    VARIABLE = "VALUE"
White space between tokens is ignored. VARIABLE is an alphanumeric string which does not start with a digit. VALUE can contain any character except for ". No escape mechanism is supported within VALUE and there is no way to write VALUE spanning more than one line. Unknown VARIABLE values are considered an error. The defined variables are:

PRUNEFS
    A whitespace-separated list of file system types (as used in /etc/mtab) which should not be scanned by updatedb(8). The file system type matching is case-insensitive. By default, no file system types are skipped. When scanning a file system is skipped, all file systems mounted in the subtree are skipped too, even if their type does not match any entry in PRUNEFS.

PRUNEPATHS
    A whitespace-separated list of path names of directories which should not be scanned by updatedb(8). Each path name must be exactly in the form in which the directory would be reported by locate(1). By default, no paths are skipped.

PRUNE_BIND_MOUNTS
    One of the strings 0, no, 1 or yes. If PRUNE_BIND_MOUNTS is 1 or yes, bind mounts are not scanned by updatedb(8). All file systems mounted in the subtree of a bind mount are skipped as well, even if they are not bind mounts. By default, bind mounts are not skipped.

NOTES
Unlike the traditional behavior of PRUNEFS and PRUNEPATHS, which excludes the matched directory (or the root of a matched file system) from the created database, the matched directory is entered in the created database. This allows e.g. locate /tmp to find the standard temporary directories even though their contents are excluded from the database. In some updatedb(8) implementations PRUNEPATHS can be used to exclude non-directory files. This is not the case in this implementation. /etc/updatedb.conf is a shell script in some implementations, which allows much more flexibility in defining the variables. Equivalent functionality can be achieved by using the command-line options to updatedb(8).

AUTHOR
Miloslav Trmac <mitr@redhat.com>

SEE ALSO
locate(1), updatedb(8)