update-dlocatedb(8)

📦
version 1.18.1 · 4 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 update-dlocatedb(8) 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to update-dlocatedb — that's the little helper from the dpkg suite that keeps your dlocate databases looking cute. grab a boba, we're doing filesystem indexing 🧚✨

✨ NAME ✨

update-dlocatedb — generates a plain text database of installed files for dlocate, no cap 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

update-dlocatedb [option...]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So here's the tea 🍓: update-dlocatedb builds you a plain text package contents listing, and it pulls that straight from the files sitting in /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list. That's it. That's the whole job. Iconic behaviour, honestly. 👑

And like — this program is usually called from cron.daily, so it just kinda does its thing in the background while you sleep. main character energy but make it scheduled. 😴✨

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -p — update the packages list only. just the packages, bestie.
  • -j — update the files list only. just the files this time.
  • -b — update both. this is the default, so if you say nothing you get everything 😌
  • -h — show this help message. the "help me bestie" button 🫶

🎀 FILES 🎀

  • /etc/default/dlocate — the configuration file with default options. rn the only option in there is whether to enable/disable gzip compression of the dlocatedb file. tiny file, big responsibility. 🧚
  • /var/lib/dpkg/info — the directory holding all the dpkg file lists. this is where the source material lives. 📂
  • /var/lib/dlocate/dlocatedb — the plain text listing of all files belonging to all packages (optionally compressed). this is the star of the show ✨
  • /var/lib/dlocate/dpkg-list — a listing of all packages known to dpkg.

This one holds the reformatted output output of dpkg -l. (yes, the original really does say "output" twice, and honestly? we respect the copy-paste moment. 😭) The file format is four fields separated by tabs:

status<TAB>package-name<TAB>installed-version<TAB>synopsis

Also ngl, the installed-version field may contain an architecture, like e.g. :arch. so watch out for that when you're parsing 👀

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

dlocate(1) — go read that one next, bestie, it's the whole point of this database 🫶

and that's the page!! version 1.18.1, dated 2026-05-30, straight from the dpkg suite. stay slay, stay indexed, and remember: it's giving cron.daily 😌💖🎀

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