Slocate

From TWUUG

slocate is similar to find for the fact that it searches the entire filesystem, but it searches a database snapshot of your system instead of the current image which makes it much faster and the output will include all files from directories that match your search criteria.

Before you use slocate you must have a database snapshot of your system, you create the database by using the updatedb command. If you use slocate or the locate command often it would be a good idea to schedule cron to update the snapshot on a schedule, I recommend daily.

If you have a database snapshot created you can use either the slocate or locate commands to invoke slocate. The syntax is "locate {filename of portion of filename}". For an example search for .firefox which means you are searching for firefox hidden user files, the command is "locate .firefox", the output is below.

user@linux:/etc# locate .firefox
/home/user/.firefox
/home/user/.firefox/plugins
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