Are you sure you are using the standard locate package? it's not 'locate' - it's 'glocate' and 'gupdatedb' - though you could alias these back to their more regular names if desired. Installing the locate package doesn't work out of the box, you need to edit /usr/bin/gupdatedb and change (probably line 208) Change: : ${find:=${BINDIR}/find} To: : ${find:=${BINDIR}/gfind} Make sure you've installed findutils-gnu Then it'll work. Busybox is a bit of an abomination.