find files Archives • Linux Tips

Find Files Owned By A Specific User

In today’s article, we’re going to explore one way to find files owned by a specific user. We’ll be using the ‘find’ command for this exercise, which means it’s probably an article more for an intermediate user than a Linux beginner.

NOTE: This article is mostly a duplicate of an earlier article. I didn’t realize that until after I was done and hit the preview button. So, I saved it as an unpublished article, with the goal of just hitting the publish button (scheduling it, really) when I had a day where I was just otherwise occupied. Today is that day. After all, the “Big Game” starts in about 30 minutes.

But… I’ll do my best to make it one small bite that’s useful for beginners, but there’s no guarantee. I’ll see what I can do! So, if you want to play around with the ‘find’ command, read on!

The ‘find’ command does pretty much what you’d expect it to do, given the name. It’s used to find things – so you don’t have to stretch your imagination any to figure this command out based on the name.

You’ll find that ‘find’ describes itself succinctly, as this:

find – search for files in a directory hierarchy

See? Pretty much exactly as you’d expect. As you can also see, you’re probably gonna be asked to specify a directory. We can do that! Even you new Linux users can do that. I have faith in you!

So then, with that information freshly reviewed, there’s no reason to make the intro any longer. Let’s just jump into the article…

Find Files Owned By A Specific User:

If you’re a regular reader, you know what’s coming…

This article requires an open terminal, like many other articles on this site. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

Let’s start by finding files owned by you in the ‘Downloads’ directory. With the open terminal, enter the following:

cd ~/Downloads
find . -user <username>

1 2	cd ~/Downloads find . -user <username>

Now, the ‘.’ is telling the ‘find’ command to search the current directory. You have to specify the username. For example, with me, it’d be:

find . -user kgiii

1	find . -user kgiii

You can also specify another user. Want to see if ‘root’ owns any of the files in your ‘Downloads’ directory? You can do that. Just change the username, like so:

find . -user root

1	find . -user root

Want to find all the files owned by root on the whole system? Well, you can do that – but it’s gonna be a whole lot of files and is going to take a while to run. You just specify the root directory (not to be confused with the root user). You do that like so:

find / -user root

1	find / -user root

In that command, you’ll notice we switched the path. We changed it to ‘/’ which is the root of the file system. You can be even find out if root owns any files in your user directory. Try this:

find ~ -user root

1	find ~ -user root

In my case, I’ve done things like compile and install software from my ~/Downloads directory, so I actually have files in there that are owned by root. If you’re a new user, you quite likely won’t have anything like that going on.

Play around with the ‘find’ command a bit, and it’ll become a bit more clear. Don’t forget to run man find to learn more about the command. There’s a lot more to it and it can be a pretty useful command.

Closure:

Anyhow, that’s a small bite of the ‘find’ command – but it’s a useful bite. The goal is to take a small bite and do what I can to make it approachable by even a new Linux user. Hopefully, I’ve done just that. Give me a yell if you think it worked – or if you think it didn’t work.

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your own site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

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How To: Find Files Over A Certain Size

Today’s article is going to be a quick article, one where we learn how to find files over a certain size. We’ll be using the ‘find’ command, which we’ve used previously, even though it can be fairly complicated to use. If you want to play around with the ‘find’ command, read on!

Also, and this wasn’t the first article I wrote tonight. I wrote another article. It was a good article. No, it was a great article! Then, as I’m wrapping that article up and hit the preview button, I scrolled down and saw the automatic article recommendation thing at the bottom…

Yup… It was such a good article, I wrote it twice! Well, I couldn’t let that pass – as I’d just done so recently, so I’m writing a new one and this one should be entirely new!

Making the find command approachable to new users means doing it in small bits. Fortunately, the command tells you what it does by its very name. It does exactly what you’d expect – it helps you find files. In fact, it defines itself as:

find – search for files in a directory hierarchy

So, it does what you’d expect it to do – though it can seem fairly complicated to a new user. Let’s do our best to make it approachable, shall we?

Lets Find Files Over A Certain Size:

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know what’s coming next…

So, if you just want to run this ‘find’ command in the directory (and recursive into sub-directories) you’re in, it’s nice and easy. Try this:

find -size +100M

1	find -size +100M

As you can guess, that finds files bigger than 100 MB in your current directory (and recursively). If you want to find files of a different size, you just change 100M to whatever you need – like 1000M (you can use G for gigabytes, for example).

If you want, you can specify a directory. Let’s say you want to do the entire system from the root directory (not to be confused with the root user). You just specify that – but you’ll want to use ‘sudo’ because you don’t have permission to read all those files.

sudo find / -size +100M

1	sudo find / -size +100M

Like this, you can specify the starting directory. If you want to find all files larger than 2 GB in your home directory (and sub-directories) then you just run this command:

find ~ / -size +2G

1	find ~ / -size +2G

There’s so much that you can do with the ‘find’ command. It’s really quite useful and I find myself using it with some regularity. Don’t forget to run the man find command to learn more about it. You can do a lot more than just find files over a certain size.

Closure:

So, I’ve tried to make the find command approachable by even novice users. It can be a bit complex looking, but it really is useful. If you think I’ve made it approachable, go ahead and comment. Of course, comment if you think the opposite is true. It’s all good, we’ve just tried to learn how to find files over a certain size.

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Find Multiple Filenames By Extension – With Locate

In today’s article, we’re going to explore another way to find multiple filenames by extension – with locate. It’s a handy skill to have and will see you installing ‘mlocate’ to get access to the ‘locate’ command. It shouldn’t be a difficult or even very long article.

If this seems really familiar, then you’re paying attention. After all, it was just a couple of days ago that you saw this article:

How To: Find Multiple Filenames By Extension

So, why are we covering the same topic? Well, WordPress, for legitimate security concerns, likes to eat the slash. (It’s a slash and a backslash. There’s no ‘forward slash’ if you want to be *technically* correct.)

Slashes are understood programmatically, by many programs – including PHP. So, in theory it’d be possible to at least probe for exploits with an unescaped slash. The solution is sort of to escape the slash by including two of them, but then WordPress eats that escaping slash every time you save a draft and add to it!

This is extremely frustrating as an author. It seriously sucks. It’s something I’ll need to keep in mind for future articles, always wary of the dastardly slash! At least now I know…

Well, that hassle of escaping the slash also reminded me that we can accomplish the same thing without any slashes, just by using the ‘locate’ command. With the previous article still fresh in my memory, I figured I might as well write the same article – but with a different tool. Why not?!?

Install mlocate:

The ‘locate’ command is actually a part of the mlocate package. It’s not always installed by default, but it should be in every default repository out there. It should be easy enough for you to install.

For the record, the ‘locate’ command describes itself like:

locate – find files by name

Well, that description looks promising – and is exactly what we’re hoping to accomplish! So then, go ahead and install it. You can install it just like you’d install any other software. In the terminal, it’d look something like:

Install mlocate In RHEL/CentOS:

sudo yum install mlocate

1	sudo yum install mlocate

Install mlocate In Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install mlocate

1	sudo apt install mlocate

That’ll work for most distros, assuming you’re using those package managers. If you’re using a different distro, just go ahead and try the same command but adjusted for your package management software. You should be able to find and install it easily.

NOTE: You’re not done yet. The locate command works off of a database. It’s really quick to generate it and it will use a cron job to keep itself updated after that. So, to get the database started, you’ll want to use this command:

sudo updatedb

1	sudo updatedb

With that done, you’re good to go to the next step…

Find Multiple Filenames By Extension With Locate:

Don’t close your terminal from the previous step! Like oh so many articles, this one also requires an open terminal. So, with your terminal still open, you can start to find filenames by extension with locate. For example:

locate -i "*.iso" "*.deb"

1	locate -i ".iso" ".deb"

That will find filenames by extension (with ‘locate’) in the current directory. If you want to specify more filenames, it’s really simple:

locate -i ~/Downloads "*.iso" "*.deb"

1	locate -i ~/Downloads ".iso" ".deb"

You can find just one file by extension:

locate -i "*.iso"

1	locate -i "*.iso"

Or you can find a few files by extension:

locate -i "*.iso" "*.deb" "*.zip

1	locate -i ".iso" ".deb" "*.zip

The sky’s the proverbial limit and the syntax is so much easier. It’s my understanding that the ‘locate’ command is faster because it relies on a database. I ran a couple of tests, using the article about how to time a command and the results weren’t really conclusive – but I only tested with very simple operations. So, your mileage may vary. Feel free to test it and let me know your results!

Closure:

Well, there’s another article. This time, you’ve learned how to find multiple filenames by extension with ‘locate’, and seen that ‘locate’ is a handy command with easier syntax. So, if you’re interested in the ‘locate’ command, be sure to check the man page (man locate). There are many folks who seem to prefer the ‘locate’ command in general, so it seemed like a good article to include.

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How To: Find Multiple Filenames By Extension

Today’s article will show you how to find multiple filenames by extension, using the find command in the terminal. It’s a pretty handy skill to have for when you need to know where files of a certain extension reside on your file system.

If you got a new article notification yesterday, that’s because I’m an idiot. Instead of hitting the schedule button, I hit the publish button. I’m not sure what I was thinking. It was fairly early in the afternoon and I wasn’t even sipping wine at the time! Sorry for disturbing you unnecessarily. I almost sent out an ‘oops’ newsletter, but then I’d have just disturbed you twice.

Anyhow, this will be another article that makes use of the find command. The find command is a rather robust command and can be somewhat daunting for new people. I feel more comfortable writing articles that let you learn it in chunks, rather than trying to cover the entire thing. I do find it hard to explain, but I’ll do my best.

What’s this useful for? Well, let’s say you want to find .deb, .zip, and .iso files in you ~/Downloads directory. That’s what this command is going to do for you. You can find multiple filenames by extension in the terminal and it’s not overly complex once you understand the basics of the command.

Instead of making the intro needlessly longer, and to make up for today’s scheduling gaff, I’ll keep the intro short and we’ll just run straight into the article…

Find Multiple Filenames By Extension:

In the intro, I mentioned that this was going to be done in the terminal. As such, we’re obviously going to need an open terminal for this exercise. To do so, press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open. Tada!

Warning: I do not explain this one as well as I’d hoped. So, I tried to explain by way of demonstrating. I’m hopeful that works.

Now, here’s the command I just ran in my terminal:

find ~/Downloads -type f \( -name "*.deb" -o -name "*.zip" -o -name "*.iso" \)

1	find ~/Downloads -type f \( -name ".deb" -o -name ".zip" -o -name "*.iso" \)

Now, if you want to run it in the current directory, you can specify the directory or you can change ~/Downloads to a . (period).

If you want to find just one file, you’d stop after "*.deb" and leave the closing \). If you want to add additional files, you would include -o -name "*.<extension>" and make sure to keep the closing ).

It might be easier to show you. For formatting reasons, I’ll use the . (period) instead of specifying a directory. It’ll fit on your screen better than a longer command. So, “How To:”…

Find One File By Extension:

find . -type f \( -name "*.deb" \)

1	find . -type f \( -name "*.deb" \)

Find Two Files By Extension:

find . -type f \( -name "*.deb" -o -name "*.zip" \)

1	find . -type f \( -name ".deb" -o -name ".zip" \)

Find Three Files By Extension:

find . -type f \( -name "*.deb" -o -name "*.zip" -o -name "*.iso" \)

1	find . -type f \( -name ".deb" -o -name ".zip" -o -name "*.iso" \)

So, hopefully you can see how this find command works. I can’t think of a better way to explain the command than to show it to you in examples. I hope that works for people. Feel free to comment in either direction, as I think it might work for some but be less effective for others.

In theory, you could find all sorts of files by extension, just remember to include the -o -name and file type and noting that the asterisk is a wildcard in this instance, meaning all files with that extension will be found. So, .gz files would be "*.gz". You can make the command as long as your heart desires!

Well, no… There’s bound to be an upper limit somewhere. (Wait, I looked it up, the maximum number of characters in the terminal is 4096 characters. And now we know…)

EDIT: You have no idea how much of a pain in the butt this article turned out to be. Holy crap. For safety reasons, WordPress eats the backslash \. I did not know this. Nobody knows this. The solution is to escape the backslash by using it twice. This article is full of backslashes. I think I got them all. It eats them every time I save the draft, so hopefully they show up in publication. I can never edit this article again, so it is what it is. Well, I could edit it again, but it’d be a pain in the butt.

Closure:

So, yeah… Today we’ve learned to find multiple filenames by extension. At least I hope we have. It’s not so easy to explain, but I figured if I explained it by showing examples then you’d be able to pick it up in context. If you do have any questions, just drop ’em into the comment box below and I’m usually pretty speedy at getting back to people. As always, the man page is probably helpful.

Again, sorry about the fake article notification. That doesn’t happen often, but it does sometimes happen. In an ideal world, I’d have an awesome editor and I would just save everything as a draft. If you’re interested in volunteering for that role, let me know! It’d make my life so much easier, I think… I mean, I don’t really know… It just seems like something that’d help.

Also, I’m pretty excited to write this month’s meta article. I’ll probably wait and schedule it for the holiday or a weekend day. They’re not important articles, but I find it interesting. The site’s growing steadily.

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Find Files Modified On A Specific Day

In today’s article, we’re going to do exactly what the title says, we’re going to find files modified on a specific day. Imagine that! We’re doing what it says in the title! I dunno why I write the things I do. But, I do have quite a few people reading, and hardly any of ’em complain!

So, why would you want to do this? Well, let’s say Big Bad John logged into your system on Friday. He was fired for drinking at lunch, but still had access to the system for another hour before security got around to hauling his butt out of the building.

Wouldn’t you like to know what files were changed on his computer that day, just to see if he’d done anything malicious? You might also have some weird system errors and want to know what files have changed today so that you can narrow down your search for the culprit. There are all sorts of reasons why you might want to know how to find files modified on a specific day.

We’re going to be using a simple command, and just one command. We’ll be using the ‘find’ function. There are surely other ways to do this, but we’ll use the find command. It works and it means you have a relatively short article.

How To: Find Files Modified On A Specific Day:

With your terminal now open, let’s say you want to find files edited on the day this article is published. To do that, you’d run this command:

find . -maxdepth 1 -newermt "2022-10-22"

1	find . -maxdepth 1 -newermt "2022-10-22"

For the sake of simplicity, the format is YYYY-MM-DD. You could use other date formats that are recognized by the system, but we’ll just stick to this date format as it’s nice and easy.

Now, you can also adjust your ‘maxdepth‘ value. If it’s a 1, it will dig down one directory deep. So, if you’re in your home directory, it’ll dig into ~/Downloads, ~/Pictures, ~/Documents, etc… If you change it to 2, it’ll dig into the sub-directories, like ~/Downloads/foo and ~/Documents/bar.

If you want to find files modified on a specific day, simply change the date in the command and start searching. It’s handy if you edited a file and can’t recall which file it was you edited. The command can be used for all sorts of things like that. Good luck!

Closure:

There you go… You have another article and this one teaches you how to find files modified on a specific day. It’s a short article with just one command. There’s no reason to pad the article further. It’s just the one command. Thanks for reading!

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