Searching

Question 1

What is the command to search the current directory for a file/directory?

Answer 1

find >/path< -name >’name’<

i. e find -name ‘file1’
i. e find ./ -name ‘file2’

Question 2

What denotes the pseudo file system when doing a block listing?

Answer 2

devtmpfs and tmpfs mount points

*file system only exists in RAM when operating

Question 3

How do you search for a file/directory ignoring case sensitivity?

Answer 3

find >/path< -iname ‘>name

Question 4

How do you search for everything excluding a specified file/directory?

Answer 4

find -not -name ‘>name

Question 5

How do you locate all character devices on the system?

Answer 5

find / -type c

Question 6

How do you locate all link files on the system?

Answer 6

find / -type l

Question 7

How do you locate all block devices on the system?

Answer 7

find / type b

Question 8

How do you locate files larger than a designated size?

Answer 8

find >/path< -size n

i. e find -size +1G *greater than gigabytes
i. e find -size 1470c *equal to bytes
i. e find -size -14k *less than kilobytes

Question 9

How do you find files denoted by timestamp modification date?

Answer 9

find >path< -mtime n

i. e find -mtime -3 *modified less than 3 days
i. e find -mtime 1+ *modified over a day ago
i. e find -mtime 2 *modified 2 days ago

Question 10

How do you find files owned by a specific user?

Answer 10

find -user >user<

i.e find / -user user1

Question 11

How do you find files denoted by permission?

Answer 11

find -perm >octal notation<

i.e find -perm 755

Question 12

How do you search for a file by using an incrementally populated database?

Answer 12

locate >name

Question 13

How do you update the search database for locate in the event a new file is not detected?

Answer 13

updatedb

Question 14

How do you find a file and perform and subsequent action?

Answer 14

find >path< -name >name< -exec >command< {} \;

i. e find -name file1 -exec chmod 755 {} \;
* {} \; is a placeholder, gets replaced by internal file handles