Installing Findutils-4.1

Estimated build time:           1 minute
Estimated required disk space:  3 MB

Installing Findutils

Before Findutils is installed the findutils patch file has to be unpacked.

Install Findutils by running the following commands:

patch -Np1 -i ../findutils-4.1.patch &&
./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make libexecdir=/usr/bin install

Command explanations

patch -Np1 -i ../findutils-4.1.patch: This patch is to fix some compliation errors by avoiding a variable conflict and changing some bad syntax.

Contents

The Findutils package contains the find, locate, updatedb, xargs, frcode, code and bigram programs.

Description

Find

The find program searches for files in a directory hierarchy which match a certain criteria. If no criteria is given, it lists all files in the current directory and it's subdirectories.

Locate

Locate scans a database which contain all files and directories on a filesystem. This program lists the files and directories in this database matching a certain criteria. If a user is looking for a file this program will scan the database and tell him exactly where the files he requested are located. This only makes sense if the locate database is fairly up-to-date else it will provide out-of-date information.

Updatedb

The updatedb program updates the locate database. It scans the entire file system (including other file system that are currently mounted unless it is told not to do so) and puts every directory and file it finds into the database that's used by the locate program which retrieves this information. It's a good practice to update this database once a day to have it up-to-date whenever it is needed.

Xargs

The xargs command applies a command to a list of files. If there is a need to perform the same command on multiple files, a file can be created that contains all these files (one per line) and use xargs to perform that command on the list.

frcode

updatedb runs a program called frcode to compress the list of file names using front-compression, which reduces the database size by a factor of 4 to 5.

code

code is the ancestor of frcode. It was used in older-style locate databases.

bigram

bigram is used together with code to produce older-style locate databases. To learn more about these last three programs, read the locatedb.5 manual page.

Dependencies

Findutils-4.1 needs the following to be installed:


sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

grep from the grep package

cc from the gcc package

make from the make package

patch from the patch package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
date from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package