find command - some unusual usages

Products

• XOS

Issue/Introduction

The Linux command 'find' is well-known in itself, but rarely exploited to its full potential.N/A

Cause

Most Linux-using engineers will sometimes use the 'find' command to... well to find a file:

Here's a fairly typical example:

 

[[email protected] /]# find /tftpboot/sean_1/ -name lastlog

/tftpboot/sean_1/usr/bin/lastlog

/tftpboot/sean_1/var/log/lastlog

/tftpboot/sean_1/sean_common/usr/bin/lastlog

/tftpboot/sean_1/sean_common/var/log/lastlog

Yet 'find' can do so very much more! How about using it to find all files on a VAP member which have changed in the last 24-hours:

 

find /tftpboot/sean_1/ -type f -mtime 0

 

Or, slight change, to find which files have changed *today* (i.e. since midnight):

 

find /tftpboot/sean_1/ -daystart -type f -mtime 0

 

Just a couple of (potentially useful in their own right) illustrations. find can do a lot more than just find files by name...