/usr/bin/locate , maybe OT - but asking anyway

[Bill Cole]

On 20 Jun 2019, at 8:56, Christoph Kukulies wrote:

> I’m wondering why the /usr/bin/locate command doesn’t find 
> anything that’s located in ~/Documents, when ~/Documents is located 
> on iCloud Drive.
>
> Trying to locate (even after a /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb) doesn’ 
> t look in iCloud Drive.

The locate.updatedb script is intended to run as the "nobody" user and 
so only see parts of the system that are visible to all users. Some 
versions of that script actively enforce that design by fixing ownership 
of the locate DB and relaunching as nobody.

It's a privacy issue. Despite the evolution back towards computers being 
one-user devices, MacOS is still a multi-user Unix derivative at heart 
and 'locate' is part of that heritage. If you want to find a document 
that you own in a directory that only you can access, the "mdfind" 
utility (which uses Spotlight's DB) will do that.

-- 
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)