Can I just disable updatedb?
Yes you can disable it in the crons or remove the package that provides updatedb
. On a Red Hat system you'd go about the steps in determining if anything requires it prior to removal.
First find out where the program is located on disk.
$ type updatedb updatedb is /usr/bin/updatedb
Next find out what package provides
updatedb
.$ rpm -qf /usr/bin/updatedb mlocate-0.26-3.fc19.x86_64
See if anything requires
mlocate
.$ rpm -q --whatrequires mlocate no package requires mlocate
Nothing requires it so you can remove the package.
$ yum remove mlocate
You can disable the scanning of directories that has many files (/var/www
for example) by editing the /etc/updatedb.conf
configuration file. If you really want to disable it, then just remove the cronjob.
Remove it using your package manager, if another package uses it, you will know, since it has to depend on it (package dependency).
I have a server with Nginx
, php-fpm
and mysql
, and it works beautifully without updatedb
.