Some more examples of find command

Here I am posting down a some of the way I use find in Unix or Linux box frequently, I trust this would help somebody who is new with in UNIX find command or any engineer who has begun working on UNIX environment.
find_command

See Also:

  • How to use find command in Linux
  • Filtering by Time and Size

    We add a suffix on the end of our value that specifies how we are counting. These are some popular options:

  • c: bytes
  • k: Kilobytes
  • M: Megabytes
  • G: Gigabytes
  • b: 512-byte blocks
  • Size:
    Find all 60MB files, use following command.

    # find / -size 60M
    

    If you want to find Size between 60MB – 150MB, use following command

    # find / -size +60M -size -150M
    

    Time:
    Linux stores time data about access times, modification times, and change times.

  • Access Time: Last time a file was read or written to.
  • Modification Time: Last time the contents of the file were modified.
  • Change Time: Last time the file’s inode meta-data was changed.

    Some time we want to find those files which are modified in last 15 days.

    # find / -mtime 15
    

    Find those files which are accessed in last 14 days.

    # find / -atime 14
    

    To find all the files which are altered over 60 days back and under 120 days.

    # find / -mtime +60 –mtime -120
    

    To find all the files which are changed in last 1 hour, use following command.

    # find / -cmin -60
    

    To find all the files which are modified in last 1 hour.

    # find / -mmin -60
    

    To find all the files which are accessed in last 1 hour.

    # find / -amin -60
    

    Finding by Owner and Permissions

    Owner:
    You can also search for files by the file user or group. You do this by using the “- user” and “-group” parameters separately.

    Find all files called technical.txt under “/” directory of owner Dennis.

    # find / -user dennis -name technical.txt
    

    Find all files that belongs to user Dennis under /home directory, use following command:

    # find /home -user dennis
    

    Same as If you want to find all files that belongs to group Administrator under /home directory, use following command:

    # find /home -group developer
    

    To find all .txt files of user Tecmint under /home directory.

    # find /home -user tecmint -iname "*.txt"
    

    Permissions:
    We can also search for files with specific permissions.

    Find all the files whose permissions are 644.

    # find . -type f -perm 0644
    

    Find all files whose permission is not 644.

    # find / -type f ! -perm 777
    

    Find all the SGID bit files whose permissions set to 755.

    # find / -perm 2755
    

    Same as SGID if you want to find Sticky Bit Files with 644 Permissions.

    # find / -perm 1644
    

    Find all the SGID bit files.

    # find / -perm /u=s
    

    Same as SGID if you want to find Sticky Bit Files

    # find / -perm /g+s
    

    Find all Read Only files.

    # find / -perm /u=r
    

    Filtering by Depth

    Some times we search a file but don’t want to go more than 2 or 3 levels down in the sub directories. This is done using the maxdepth option.

    # find ./ -maxdepth 2 -name "*.php"
    Or
    # find ./ -maxdepth 3 -name "*.php"
    

    Note: In the first example uses maxdepth of 2, which means it will not go lower than 2 level deep, either only in the current directory and same as on The second example uses maxdepth of 3, which means it will not go lower than 3 level deep, either only in the current directory.

    Executing and Combining Find Commands

    Some time you require to change all files permission who has 777 permission using single command.

    # find / -type f -perm 0777 -exec chmod 644 {} \;
    

    Same as for directory also.

    # find / -type d -perm 777 -exec chmod 755 {} \;
    

    Copy single file to multiple location.

    # find dir1 dir2 dir3 -type d -exec cp index.php {} \;
    

    To find a single file called technical.txt and remove it using single command.

    # find . -type f -name "technical.txt" -exec rm -f {} \;
    

    Same as If you want to find and remove multiple files, then use.

    # find . -type f -name "*.txt" -exec rm -f {} \;
    

    Find all files whose size is more that 100 MB and remove them using single command.

    # find / -size +100M -exec rm -rf {} \;
    

    If you want to delete any specify format files, use following commans.

    # find / -type f -name *.mp4 -exec rm {} \;
    

    Find all .mp4 files with more than 15MB and delete them using single command.

    # find / -type f -name *.mp4 -size +15M -exec rm {} \;
    

    Empty Files & Directories:

    To file all empty files under certain path.

    # find /tmp -type f -empty
    

    Same as for directories.

    # find /tmp -type d -empty
    

    Enjoy it!

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