plocate does not index $HOME on Btrfs subvolume setups unless PRUNE_BIND_MOUNTS="no"

[rewisch]

System details

Omarchy 3.2

What's wrong?

On Btrfs systems locate (plocate) fails to index anything in $HOME. Running updatedb completes without errors, but locate returns no results for files inside the user’s home directory.

The cause is that Arch (and Omarchy, inheriting from Arch) ships:

PRUNE_BIND_MOUNTS="yes"

in /etc/updatedb.conf

Btrfs subvolumes appear as bind mounts, so updatedb prunes them even though they are real subvolumes.

Setting it to:

PRUNE_BIND_MOUNTS="no"

immediately fixes the issue. This might be a bit crude and I'm not sure whether it might have unintended side-effects for some users.

Another solution might be to create a different db for home (see https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/mlocate-does-not-find-files-in-home-on-fedora-33-btrfs/75073) ?

I'd be happy to contribute a solution myself, but without a DISTRIBUTORS.md i'm a bit lost at the moment.

[jorge-campo]

I found the same problem, and it was driving me crazy, as I rely on locate/plocate more than on find.

I opened #4292 and I hope it gets accepted.

[rewisch]

Thx!