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Andrea Crotti

26 Feb 2012 26 Feb '12

11:49 a.m.

It's a bit a shame that there isn't any default good indexing system for Linux. Now there is also a inotify implementation and tools to set up watchers on the filesystem, so why are we still mainly stuck with locate and the expensive updatedb? Are there other problems with the inotify approach maybe or just lack of developer interest?

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Raven

26 Feb 26 Feb

12:18 p.m.

On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:49:55 +0800, Andrea Crotti wrote:

It's a bit a shame that there isn't any default good indexing system for Linux. Now there is also a inotify implementation and tools to set up watchers on the filesystem, so why are we still mainly stuck with locate and the expensive updatedb?

Are there other problems with the inotify approach maybe or just lack of developer interest?

Great idea, though I thought inotify doesn't suit this task. For updatedb, it should call inotify_watch for every file on the filesystem, that's quite inefficient. I think Linux's audit system could do this, though.

Andrea Crotti

12:24 p.m.

On 02/26/2012 12:18 PM, Raven wrote:

On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:49:55 +0800, Andrea Crotti wrote:

...
It's a bit a shame that there isn't any default good indexing system for Linux. Now there is also a inotify implementation and tools to set up watchers on the filesystem, so why are we still mainly stuck with locate and the expensive updatedb?

Are there other problems with the inotify approach maybe or just lack of developer interest?

Great idea, though I thought inotify doesn't suit this task. For updatedb, it should call inotify_watch for every file on the filesystem, that's quite inefficient.

I think Linux's audit system could do this, though.

Well I don't mean to integrate directly updatedb and locate, I mean a new tool that uses the inotify api. The efficiency might be a problem sure, but if you filter well only on the paths and the files that you actually need I don't think it would be too bad, after all inotify is in the kernel. How would the audit system be better? And what do you mean exactly?

Calvin Morrison

12:23 p.m.

It is only for Linux. That was my barrier. It has no portability to Mac or BSDs. It is a great tool and really comes in handy. There is an package called inotify-tools that does some basic watching. I've used it in the past. Calvin On Feb 26, 2012 6:50 AM, "Andrea Crotti" wrote:

It's a bit a shame that there isn't any default good indexing system for Linux. Now there is also a inotify implementation and tools to set up watchers on the filesystem, so why are we still mainly stuck with locate and the expensive updatedb?

Are there other problems with the inotify approach maybe or just lack of developer interest?

Andrea Crotti

12:27 p.m.

On 02/26/2012 12:23 PM, Calvin Morrison wrote:

It is only for Linux. That was my barrier. It has no portability to Mac or BSDs. It is a great tool and really comes in handy.

There is an package called inotify-tools that does some basic watching. I've used it in the past.

Calvin

Well mac has already spotlight, and BSD probably has some other ways. If you want something fast there it must run in the kernel, so it's very hard to have something multi-plaform. This python project is multi-platform in theory, http://pypi.python.org/pypi/watchdog, (and uses inotify on Linux) but it's not designed exactly with this intent IMHO.

Tom Gundersen

12:39 p.m.

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 12:49 PM, Andrea Crotti wrote:

It's a bit a shame that there isn't any default good indexing system for Linux. Now there is also a inotify implementation and tools to set up watchers on the filesystem, so why are we still mainly stuck with locate and the expensive updatedb?

Are there other problems with the inotify approach maybe or just lack of developer interest?

Both KDE (strigi) and Gnome (tracker) have indexers that use inotify. They are obviously different in focus from locate, but maybe they are worth investigating if you want something to build on. Cheers, Tom

Mantas M.

1:16 p.m.

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 11:49:55AM +0000, Andrea Crotti wrote:

It's a bit a shame that there isn't any default good indexing system for Linux. Now there is also a inotify implementation and tools to set up watchers on the filesystem, so why are we still mainly stuck with locate and the expensive updatedb?

Are there other problems with the inotify approach maybe or just lack of developer interest?

One problem with inotify is that it, AFAIK, requires adding each and every directory separately to the inotify watch, which just doesn't work with the entire /home, much less /. Fanotify can watch entire trees easily, but is a root-only API for now. -- Mantas Mikulėnas

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participants (5)

Andrea Crotti
Calvin Morrison
Mantas M.
Raven
Tom Gundersen