Trying to update the slocate database

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 11, 2007, at 05:40, David Epstein wrote:

> My first command: slocate slocate
> slocate: fatal error: Could not find user database
> '/opt/local/var/db/slocate/slocate.db':  No such file or directory
>
> My second command: which slocate
> /opt/local/bin/slocate
>
> My third command: sudo /opt/local/etc/daily.slocate
> Rebuilding slocate database:
> slocate: fatal error: load_file: Could not open file:
> /opt/local/etc/updatedb.conf: No such file or directory

I get that message too... but the script does not exit, and it does  
build the slocate.db. Takes several minutes. Then slocate works fine.  
Guess the error wasn't fatal after all. You or the maintainer (whom  
I'm Cc'ing) could report that misleading message to the developers of  
slocate.

There's more weirdness going on. daily.slocate includes this:

     if [ -f /opt/local/etc/updatedb.conf ]; then
		# One day, I'll look at the bug that requires doing cd / when launched
		# with periodic.
		(cd / && /opt/local/bin/slocate -u -c)
	else
		(cd / && /opt/local/bin/slocate -u)
	fi

So, if the conf file exists, it uses the -c option. Otherwise it  
doesn't. Since, for you, the conf file doesn't exist, it should have  
used the version without the -c option. Why, then, is slocate still  
trying to read the conf file?

I tried to avoid the message by creating an empty conf file:

sudo touch /opt/local/etc/updatedb.conf

But now I get:

slocate: option requires an argument -- c

But the manpage does not show that -c requires or even supports an  
argument:

        -c     Parse  '/opt/local/etc/updatedb.conf'  when updating  
the slocate
               database. (see CONFIGURATION FILE below).

Sounds like there are plenty of bugs here that should be reported  
upstream.

> Can anyone help me get slocate going? Where is updatedb.conf  
> supposed to
> come from, and why wasn't it installed when I installed slocate?

The maintainer could comment on why a conf file was not installed  
with the port by default, but I'd guess it's optional.