i'm running slackware linux and everytime i open the console, it will print some words of wisdom, advice, jokes, etc. well, i wanted to find out where that file was so i decided i'd do a grep for one of the more unique words in one of the quotes. so i did: from the root directory as root. the "./\.*" is to search for hidden files also, since it's likely that the file containing these quotes is hidden. it's been running for a long time and nothing has happened yet. can somebody tell me what i should do to do a grep search through my entire filesystem(even hidden files and folders) for a specific string of text?

ps. if you know the location of the file that holds those quotes, thats great , id like to know, but this is really more about learning how to use grep than really finding that file.

thanx

Well, you could try:

find . * -exec grep "famous" {} \; -print

and then

find . .* -exec grep "famous" {} \; -print

for all the hidden files. But it'll take ages.

However, I can tell you that the files you are looking for are in /usr/share/games/fortunes. That'll probably save you some time!

You could try recursive searching with grep:

grep -R "famous" *

It also works for hidden files.

sometimes it hangs after a while. for example, if i do that first command you gave me in my root directory it will go through ./dev for a long time and then just stop after a while

Its an old console game called fortune. The default database location is /usr/share/games/fortunes. However, I do not know where Slack installs it.

http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man6/fortune.6.html

I'm not a real expert on the grep statement. I would say its going to take awhile.

It installs it in that same place. I told the OP that in the first reply.