phantom files

[Mark Haney]

Pastor JW wrote:
> On Thursday 11 September 2008 04:27:51 am Mark Haney wrote:
>>>  Reindexing with Tracker and rebooting
>>> changed nothing. The phantom files still showed up with "locate".
>>>
>>> Anyone have an explanation?
> 
>>     Try re-booting. The locate system is re-loaded in a bootup.
>>
>> Karl
> 
> He JUST finished saying "rebooting changed nothing".
> 
>> Good grief.  Don't reboot as root run 'updatedb'.
>>
>> This isn't Windows, you know.
> 
> I have been wondering about that as it seems an awful lot of windoze "cures" 
> and indeed windoze support on this list.  Is Ubuntu really as bad an OS as 
> windoze?  I look at the top of the page alot to reassure myself and it always 
> seems to say "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions" but 
> the subject is fully 90 percent windoze, or windoze type advice!  Reboot, 
> reinstall, etc, never cure the original problem, and worse they are usually 
> quite destructive to one's data.  Its like getting a sliver in your foot and 
> hacking the leg off above the knee to cure it!  In windoze case they 
> generally take the right leg off to cure the sliver in the left 
> foot!  ...tthen take the other one off the the next day when the cure didn't 
> work the first time!
> 
> On this question, why are there two separate databases used or if there are, 
> why when one removes something from one, isn't the other one updated to 
> reflect the change since they are holding the same file information.  Tracker 
> seems to get massive so I'd suspect there are bugs to work out there yet.   
> 

Here's my take.  (and OPINION only)  I think that the majority of Ubuntu 
users are from the Windows world.  Ubuntu is pretty good for getting 
n00bs on to linux.  But, with that said, I would think there are fewer 
really experienced people on this list than other lists.  The fedora 
list is chock full of people with more linux than windows knowledge.

That's not to say the Ubuntu crowd isn't knowledgeable, just maybe less 
aware of the niceties of linux than some others.  I think part of that 
problem is due to the fact that Ubuntu is much more GUI-centric than 
other distros. (IMHO, again).  That makes Windows users more 
comfortable, but limits what those users can really do with a linux box. 
  The command line is your friend.  Period.  Know matter what GUI tools 
might be out there, I can do it from the CLI much faster.

Windows machines are typically hamstrung on the CLI.  You can't do all 
the things there that you can from the CLI in linux.

So, feel free to flame, it's just my opinion.

As to your other question, multiple databases are part of the game in 
linux.  Tracker is probably used (like Beagle) for indexing files for 
display in a GUI window, whereas mlocate (or slocate) is used by the shell.

Here's the deal, and what people tend to forget.  In Windows, it's 
(mostly) one Tool to Rule them All. And usually that one tool only does 
half of what it should correctly.

Whereas in linux, you have lots tools that do ONE thing, but does it 
extremely well.  In linux there is more than one way to skin a cat. 
That's part of the attraction to linux, you're not stuck in a GUI world 
where some developer decides that everyone should have the same look. 
You can customize til you are blue in the face.  That also stands for 
the tools you use.  I use locate more than 'which'.  But I can use both. 
  I use sed more than awk and grep more than almost anything else.

Does that make sense at all?


-- 
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Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
(828) 350-2415

Call (866) ERC-7110 for after hours support