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Sysadmin Lookups

locate is an essential tool for rapid system investigation.

Locating Binaries​

While which only searches your PATH, locate finds every instance:

# Find all versions of python3
locate -b "\python3" | grep "/bin/"

# Find all ffmpeg executables
locate -b "\ffmpeg" | grep "/bin/"

Finding Shared Libraries​

# Find where libssl is located
locate libssl.so

Finding Documentation and Man Pages​

# Find all man pages for grep
locate "man/man1/grep.1"

# Find documentation for a specific package
locate "doc/nginx"

Quick Inventory​

# Count how many log files are on the system
locate -c "*.log"

# Count how many .sh files are in /usr/local/bin
locate "/usr/local/bin" | grep "\.sh$" | wc -l