error messages from updatedb

[Dave Kennedy]

Dyson, Mark         1Lt   ENEB writes ...
> The problem (more of an annoyance, really) is this:  Each time the   
> default crontab executes updatedb, I get the following error message   
> (repeated twice):
> 
> find: /proc/self/fd/4: No such file or device
> 
> Now, it's a no-brainer to go and see that, indeed, no such thing exists.   
>  But I'm not clueful enough with updatedb to discover why it's trying to   
> find this link, or how to tell it to stop looking.  Ideas?  Thanks!

Updatedb looks through the entire file system and creates the locate
database.  Locate is for when you want to do:

    find / -name '*foo*' -print

which is rather slow.  Where:

    locate foo

uses the locate database (maintained by updatedb) to find all references
to foo.

I just ignore the message and delete it every day.  If you want, you
can change root crontab entry to:

    # This updates the database for 'locate' every day:
    40 07 * * *       updatedb > /dev/null 2>&1

Any output from updatedb goes into the bit bucket.

-- 
| Dave Kennedy (davek at melita.com)             Voice: 770-409-4575 |