"makewhatis" and "find" processes?

[RoboCop001]

I just woke up my MacBook Pro, and the HD sounded like there was something going on.

It wasn't the indexing, so I opened up Activity Monitor and found something taking 10-30% CPU called "find".

It was under several instances of "sh", and I think it's first parent was "locate.code" or something like that.

Anyway, after a while I opened Activity Monitor again, and the "find" process was replaced by something called "makewhatis". It disappeared almost a second after I opened Activity Monitor.

Obviously it's just part of the system, but what exactly do these processes do?

Apparently "nobody" was running them... lol?

 

[Catfish_Man]

That's part of the monthly 'maintenance' script. The time consuming part is rebuilding the database that the "locate" command uses... which is of pretty questionable value for most people. Check out the manpage for 'periodic' for more info.

 

[RoboCop001]

That's part of the monthly 'maintenance' script. The time consuming part is rebuilding the database that the "locate" command uses... which is of pretty questionable value for most people. Check out the manpage for 'periodic' for more info.

Ah ok! I figured it had something to do with the maintenance.

I'll check out that manpage.

Thanks for the clarification!