Locating Programe

[anonprivate]

I have just installed Truecrypt and thought that I would view the programme on disk.

When I typed locate truecrypt it located some of the files on the HD mainly in my home directory (see code).

When I typed whereis trucrypt it found the main programmes on disk (see code).

I expected locate to locate all the references to TC

Out of interest, I read the uninstall file properties in preview.

I noted that all references would be removed if run, except those in the X11 folder. Is that because references to volumes will be stored here? However, the TC file here looks the same as that in usr/bin.

Thanks

andrew@andrew-Dell-DM061:~$ locate truecrypt
/boot/grub/i386-pc/truecrypt.mod
/home/andrew/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments/truecrypt-7.1a-linux-x86.tar.gz.desktop
/home/andrew/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments/truecrypt-7.1a-linux-x86.tar.gz[2].desktop
/home/andrew/Downloads/truecrypt-7.1a-linux-x86.tar.gz
/home/andrew/Downloads/truecrypt-7.1a-setup-x86
/usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/truecrypt.mod
andrew@andrew-Dell-DM061:~$ whereis truecrypt
truecrypt: /usr/bin/truecrypt /usr/bin/X11/truecrypt /usr/share/truecrypt
andrew@andrew-Dell-DM061:~$

[SteveRiley]

This is a case where reading the man pages for locate and whereis will be helpful.

whereis indeed displays binaries and certain other file types. locate relies on a database that contains a pointer to every file on the system; this database must be updated. A *buntu install normally builds this database once a day. If you want locate to show fresh results, you need to manually run sudo updatedb first. To make this easier to type, I've added the following to ~/.bash_aliases

alias loc='sudo updatedb && locate'

Now I can just type loc foobar and ensure a fresh database for the search.