Fedora 4, help with find command

shmuck · 03-01-2006, 04:51 PM

Hey guys, how do you find all the files within a directory by a certain time?

I've read the "man find" thing over and over. I'm trying to find files that were last created or modified since midnight.

I've tried a bunch of different commands but nothing has gotten me very far.

bushidozen · 03-01-2006, 05:44 PM

This may not be the best way, but if you view the content of the directory as a list, and click the "Date Modified" tab, that might help you.

Also, using grep in combination with the ls command would probably work better for you.

PTrenholme · 03-01-2006, 05:45 PM

Have you considered ls -lt? Perhaps piped into grep -r "Mar 1" (Or whatever month and day in which you're interested.)

shmuck · 03-01-2006, 06:11 PM

I'll try those right now guys.

My teacher just said to use the find command. But he isnt the greatest guy around.

sipsipi · 03-01-2006, 10:45 PM

find -mtime is what you are looking for if it's a modified file or
find -atime for last access time.

ninjaz · 03-02-2006, 08:50 PM

Cant slocate do the same thing?

gilead · 03-02-2006, 09:03 PM

sipsipi's suggestion will work fine. You may want to add the -daystart switch so that the time is measured from the beginning of today instead of 24 hours ago.

shmuck · 03-07-2006, 02:18 PM

Thanks a lot guys. I've figured everything out, but I just need to find out how find files that have been modified since I booted. Also, do you guys how I can change the system login message?

gilead · 03-07-2006, 07:47 PM

You can use the same find command as the one above - but for the value that mtime uses you can take the output from:

Code:

last -x | egrep '^reboot|shutdown'

The number at the end of the line, for example (2+02:59), is how much time has elapsed since the date/time printed for the reboot.

Also, have a look in the files /etc/issue (man issue) and /etc/motd (man motd) for the login messages.

shmuck · 03-07-2006, 08:31 PM

Thanks gil!

I stumbled across the motd file today so I've got the login message and banner figured out. Just have to do the boot time thing.

Thanks for all the help guys.

sipsipi · 03-08-2006, 10:12 PM

In your response to "find files according to time" you put in

last -x | egrep '^reboot|shutdown'

What does the ^ mean that you put before "reboot"

also, what is the difference between grep and egrep?

gilead · 03-09-2006, 02:43 AM

The '^' matches the start of the line, so it would match
reboot, or
shutdown, but not
Almost time for a reboot
The difference between grep and extended grep (egrep) is in the regular expressions that they support. I couldn't make the '|' (which is used to 'or' 2 patterns) work with grep unless I used -E, which means the same as using egrep.