Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 SP2 - INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION Installation Manual page 388

cated. If desired, use wild cards to specify filenames. The program is very speedy,
because it uses a database specifically created for the purpose (rather than searching
through the entire file system). This very fact, however, also results in a major
drawback: locate is unable to find any files created after the latest update of its
database. The database can be generated by root with updatedb.
updatedb [options]
This command performs an update of the database used by locate. To include
files in all existing directories, run the program as root. It also makes sense to
place it in the background by appending an ampersand (&), so you can immediately
continue working on the same command line (updatedb &). This command
usually runs as a daily cron job (see cron.daily).
find [options]
With find, search for a file in a given directory. The first argument specifies the
directory in which to start the search. The option -name must be followed by a
search string, which may also include wild cards. Unlike locate, which uses a
database, find scans the actual directory.
Commands to Access File Contents
file [options] [files]
With file, detect the contents of the specified files.
-z
cat [options] files
The cat command displays the contents of a file, printing the entire contents to
the screen without interruption.
-n
less [options] files
This command can be used to browse the contents of the specified file. Scroll half
a screen page up or down with PgUp and PgDn or a full screen page down with
Space . Jump to the beginning or end of a file using Home and End . Press Q to exit
the program.
370 Installation and Administration
Tries to look inside compressed files
Numbers the output on the left margin