Linux Find Command, an important reference

find command is very useful and is used almost every day by Linux and system administrators. Sharing below some most common find examples which are needed and are helpful for the system administrators to work and complete their day to day tasks –

find the files starting with some word/character –

find . -name "gr*"

Syntax details -

find <. is current DIR> -name <"gr*" is a search parameter>

find files older then 30 days –

find . -type f -mtime +30 -print0 | xargs -0 ls -lh

count total 30 days old files in current directory –

find . -type f -mtime +30 -print0 | xargs -0 ls -lh | wc -l

Listing 30 days old files with specific extention format –

find . -name ".log." -type f -mtime +30 -ls
OUTPUT Below:
173 1028 -rw-r----- 1 root root 1048389 Dec 4 03:30 ./dnf.log.4
12674 1028 -rw-r----- 1 root root 1048468 Jan 19 08:29 ./dnf.librepo.log.2
13903 1028 -rw-r----- 1 root root 1048435 Nov 16 13:28 ./dnf.librepo.log.3
12676 1028 -rw-r----- 1 root root 1048554 Dec 25 09:27 ./dnf.log.3
159 1028 -rw-r----- 1 root root 1048532 Feb 9 11:24 ./dnf.log.2
160 1028 -rw-r----- 1 root root 1048466 Oct 5 2023 ./dnf.librepo.log.4

Delete files with specific extension which are older then 30 days, be very careful with step, double check that you are not deleting some important files –

find . -name “*.log” -type f -mtime +30 -delete

Pay Attention on below output –

I have used the find command to find files older then 30 days, and if you are also planning to delete 30 days older files then pay attention to the pattern, in below output, you see that log files like log000* are safe to remove but there are few log files which are not the backup files but in use files like – app-diagnostic.log, similar way in your application server can also have the same scenario, so be careful and you need to ensure that you know what you are deleting. Like now since I noticed that there are other important files also listed in below outout and I only want to delete backup logs files. so Can filter the command like given in next section.

Deleting 30 days old files with extention log0* –

find . -name "*.log0*" -type f -mtime +30 -delete

Another example –

find . -name "*.txt_backup" -type f -mtime +30 -delete

Find todays files tobe moved to another DIR name tmpbkpp, this is an example, I used echo to see what will be moved, once you tested what will be moved, you can take out echo attribute —

find . -mtime -1 -type f -print -exec echo mv '{}' tmpbkpp ';'

Find and move today’s files to a dir name tmpbkpp, make sure DIR exist else your files will be deleted, make sure you know what you are doing!

find . -mtime -1 -type f -print -exec mv '{}' tmpbkpp ';'

Sample Example below to download files and then move to another DIR with current date:

#!/bin/bash
##Written by Pankaj for APPNAME daily files download
##Version 1.0
## Dated: 24042024
##FPL Files Download
ftmp=fpl_temp
ffilter=fpl_filtered_files
tdate=$(date +'%d/%m/%Y')
mkdir $ftmp
cd $ftmp
rm -rf ./*
wget --no-verbose --no-parent --recursive --level=1 --no-directories https://uat.appname.domain.net/data/fpl/
cd ..
mkdir fpl_tmp_filtered
cd fpl_tmp_filtered
rm ./*
cd ..

find $ftmp -mtime -1 -type f -print -exec mv '{}' fpl_tmp_filtered ';'

##Filter the files


##IRCURVE RAW

irtmp=irc_temp
irfilter=irc_filtered_files
tdate=$(date +'%d/%m/%Y')
mkdir $irtmp
cd $irtmp
rm -rf ./*
wget --no-verbose --no-parent --recursive --level=1 --no-directories https://uat.gmdbapi.domain.net/data/data/generic/ircurveraw/

cd ..
mkdir irc_tmp_filtered
cd irc_tmp_filtered
rm ./*
cd ..

find $irtmp -mtime -1 -type f -print -exec mv '{}' irc_tmp_filtered ';'

Another Example script using find command and exec tool

#!/bin/bash
##Written by Pankaj for cs365 daily files download
##Version 1.0
## Dated: 24042024
##FPL Files Download
ftmp=fpl_temp
ffilter=fpl_filtered_files
tdate=$(date +'%d%m%Y')
mkdir $ftmp
cd $ftmp
rm -rf ./*
wget --no-verbose --no-parent --recursive --level=1 --no-directories https://uat.cs365api.cloudshiksha365.com/data/fpl/
cd ..
mkdir fpl_tmp_filtered
cd fpl_tmp_filtered
rm ./*
cd ..

find $ftmp -mtime -1 -type f -print -exec mv '{}' fpl_tmp_filtered ';'
mkdir required_FPL_$tdate
find fpl_tmp_filtered -name cs365_FIN_FXRATES_E* -exec mv '{}' required_FPL_$tdate ';'
find fpl_tmp_filtered -name cs365_FIN_FXRATES_13* -exec mv '{}' required_FPL_$tdate ';'

##Filter the files
##IRCURVE RAW

irtmp=irc_temp
irfilter=irc_filtered_files
mkdir $irtmp
cd $irtmp
rm -rf ./*
wget --no-verbose --no-parent --recursive --level=1 --no-directories https://uat.cs365api.cloudshiksha365.com/data/generic/ircurveraw/

cd ..
mkdir irc_tmp_filtered
cd irc_tmp_filtered
rm ./*
cd ..

find $irtmp -mtime -1 -type f -print -exec mv '{}' irc_tmp_filtered ';'
mkdir required_IRC_$tdate
find  irc_tmp_filtered -name ircurve.raw.*.EM*.txt -exec mv '{}' required_IRC_$tdate ';'
##Temp DIR Cleanup
rm -rf $irtmp irc_tmp_filtered fpl_tmp_filtered $ftmp
##find fpl_tmp_filtered -name cs365_FIN_FXRATES_13* -exec mv '{}' required_FPL_$tdate ';'
mv required_IRC_$tdate/* /mnt/dbfs/Ics365app7_15887/fs/var/interface/import/fpl/
mv required_FPL_$tdate/* /mnt/dbfs/Ics365app7_15887/fs/var/interface/import/fpl/
ls -latr /mnt/dbfs/Ics365app7_15887/fs/var/interface/import/fpl/ | tail -n 5 >> cs365_file_download_logs_$tdate.log
echo ""
echo ""