TL;DR

If you want to use plocate while your filesystem is btrfs, do the following:

  1. edit /etc/updatedb.conf: replace PRUNE_BIND_MOUNTS = "yes" with PRUNE_BIND_MOUNTS = "no"
  2. save the file
  3. update the db with sudo updatedb
  4. test again with $ locate home to see any outputs from home directory

Introduction

plocate is supposed to be a much faster drop-in replacement for mlocate, but I had a lot of troble getting it to work.

I ended up creating the SO question plocate couldn’t find results in my home dir but mlocate could. How to search results in home dir?. The details are in the post.

Getting Started

  1. Install plocate:
pacman -Syu plocate

  1. Check if you’re using btrfs with lsblk -f. If yes, check the above TL;DR solution

  2. Test with $ locate home and see if there’s any results from home directory.

Conclusion

Hopefully this article is helpful to someone in similar shoes.