10 Practical Examples for using FIND Command in Linux

Here I have tried to show you a list of options or arguments which you can use with find command to narrow down your search queries.

1. Find all the files with respect to their permission

using octal method
# find / -perm 755 -type f
using symbolic method
# find / -perm u=rwx,g=rx,o=rx -type f
Find all files with executable permission
# find / -executable -type f
Find all files with writable permission
# find / -writable -type f
Find all files with readable permission
# find / -readable -type f

2. Locate files with respect to their special permission

Find all the executable files inside /usr/bin, /bin/, /usr/sbin/, /sbin/ with SGID
# find /usr/bin/ /bin/ /usr/sbin/ /sbin/ -perm +2000 -execuatble
/usr/bin/ssh-agent
/usr/bin/locate
/usr/bin/wall
/usr/bin/write
Find all the executable files inside /usr/bin, /bin/, /usr/sbin/, /sbin/ with SUID
# find /usr/bin/ /bin/ /usr/sbin/ /sbin/ -perm +4000 -execuatble
/usr/bin/ksu
/usr/bin/gpasswd
/usr/bin/chsh
/usr/bin/chage
/usr/bin/sudo

3. Locate files with respect to size

Find all the files with more than 30MB size
# find / -size +30M -type f
Find all the files with more than 1GB size
# find / -size +1G -type f
Find all the files with more than 6KB size
# find / -size +6k -type f
NOTE: In case you want to find files/directories with size less than, use "-" sign instead of "+" sign in above examples

4. Find files with respect to their owners

Find all the files whose user owner is deepak
# find / -user deepak -type f
Find all the files whose group owner is deepak
# find / -group deepak -type f
NOTE: You can also use -uid and -gid argument respectively instead of -user and -group

5. Saving o/p to file with extra parameter

This command will locate for all the files/directories with user owner deepak and save the o/p to file.txt (the o/p will resemble same as ls -l)

# find / -user deepak  -fls file.txt
# cat file.txt
   210    4 drwx------   9 deepak   deepak       4096 Apr  5 20:26 /home/deepak
   868    4 -rw-r--r--   1 deepak   deepak        176 Jul 18  2013 /home/deepak/.bash_profile
  7053    4 -rw-r--r--   1 deepak   deepak        124 Jul 18  2013 /home/deepak/.bashrc
  7078    4 drwxrwxr-x   2 deepak   deepak       4096 Apr  5 20:26 /home/deepak/mywork
  7083    4 -rw-------   1 deepak   deepak         99 Apr  5 20:27 /home/deepak/.bash_history
  7080    4 drwxrwxr-x   2 deepak   deepak       4096 Apr  5 20:26 /home/deepak/work
  7073    4 drwxr-xr-x   2 deepak   deepak       4096 Nov 12  2010 /home/deepak/.gnome2
  7074    4 drwxr-xr-x   4 deepak   deepak       4096 Mar 14 02:38 /home/deepak/.mozilla

NOTE: If the files does not exist it will be created, and if it already exists then it will be overwritten

This command will just save the o/p to file.txt
# find / -user deepak  -fprint file.txt
# cat file.txt
/home/deepak
/home/deepak/.bash_profile
/home/deepak/.bashrc
/home/deepak/mywork
/home/deepak/.bash_history
/home/deepak/work
/home/deepak/.gnome2
/home/deepak/.mozilla

6. Add an extra argument along with find command

This command will show you long list details of all the files with size more than 50MB

# find / -size +50M  -ls
270138 65588 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root     67159234 Nov 23 00:20 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.7.0-openjdk-1.7.0.45.x86_64/jre/lib/rt.jar
134253 96796 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root     99158576 Mar 14 02:39 /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
  7291    0 -rw-------   1 root     root     134217728 Apr  5 16:49 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0f.0/resource1
  7292    0 -rw-------   1 root     root     134217728 Apr  5 20:17 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0f.0/resource1_wc

7. Find files irrespective of case

This command will find all the files/directories inside /home with name "test" irrespective of case
# find /home/ -iname test
/home/deepak/test
/home/deepak/Test

8. Find files/directory with respect to their name

Find all the files/directories with name "test"
# find /home/ -name test
/home/deepak/test

9. Find files using wildcard

This command will search all the files with .txt extentsion
# find / -name *.txt -type f
This command will search all the files from file[0-9] with .txt extentsion
# find / -name file?.txt -type f

10. Find files with respect to their modification/access time

Find all the directories accessed before 5 min
# find / -amin -5 -type d
Find all the directories accessed 60 min back from current time
# find / -amin +60 -type d
Find all the files/directories accessed exactly 5 min back
# find / -amin 5 -type d
Find all the files/directories accessed 5 days back
# find / -atime -5 -type d
NOTE: You can run all the above commands as per the modification time just by replacing "-atime" with "-mtime"

Complex example

Locate all files with name test.tx inside /home/deepak and remove them
# find /home/deepak/ -name test.txt -type f | xargs rm -f

or

# find /home/deepak/ -name test.txt -type f -exec rm -f {} \;

Please do let me know your feedback or in case I missed any thing.

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