Speedup old Linux PCs by disabling auto run of "updatedb"

Here is a way you can speedup old Linux PCs by disabling the auto run of updatedb. updatedb creates a database of all local files (an index) so they can be found faster. Most users won't need this so it can be safely disabled.There can be several files responsible for the daily update of this database:

/etc/cron.daily/find

/etc/cron.daily/slocate

/etc/cron.daily/mlocate

By default the run-parts program (which is used to run all the files there) only accepts files which contain letters, numbers and hyphens. Renaming the file to something with a dot in it for example will cron stop from executing this file.

To rename these files you have to type the following a console:

mv /etc/cron.daily/find /etc/cron.daily/find.old

mv /etc/cron.daily/slocate /etc/cron.daily/slocate.old 

mv /etc/cron.daily/mlocate /etc/cron.daily/mlocate.old

This will rename the three files so that cron will not execute them anymore.