[SOLVED] How can I do the follwoing task?

Ajit Gunge · 04-13-2012, 09:08 AM

I have a situation here.This is what I want to do and I dont know how to go about doing this.

I have a request from a user say "A takle "; "B datya" stating that they want themselves to be removed from a certain mailing list say "teen takle 1212]".
I have access to the server but I dont know what script sends this particular mail to the user.All I know is the user name and the subject of the mail and the mail details.Now I have the following issues.

1.)How do I find the script that actually sends the mail.
2.)How do I search for the user teen takle in all the files and folders on the server.

Can someone tell me how do I proceed about doing this?

Thanks,

colucix · 04-13-2012, 09:27 AM

It might take a long time traversing all the directory tree and greppin' all the files. You can try to restrict the search by excluding some directories and use the proper options of grep to ignore binary files. Here is an example:

Code:

find / \( -wholename /etc -o -wholename /usr -o -wholename /tmp -o -wholename /var -o -wholename /proc \) -prune -o -type f -exec grep -i -HI "A takle" {} \;

I don't know if you're familiar with the -prune predicate of find. Anyway, you can add/remove more

Code:

-wholename /some/path

expressions inside the escaped parentheses and separated by the logical operator -o in order to exclude or include more system directories. For an explanation of -prune, you can take a look at this post, self-citation, I know...

Hope this helps!

Ajit Gunge · 04-17-2012, 01:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by colucix

It might take a long time traversing all the directory tree and greppin' all the files. You can try to restrict the search by excluding some directories and use the proper options of grep to ignore binary files. Here is an example:

Code:

find / \( -wholename /etc -o -wholename /usr -o -wholename /tmp -o -wholename /var -o -wholename /proc \) -prune -o -type f -exec grep -i -HI "A takle" {} \;

I don't know if you're familiar with the -prune predicate of find. Anyway, you can add/remove more

Code:

-wholename /some/path

expressions inside the escaped parentheses and separated by the logical operator -o in order to exclude or include more system directories. For an explanation of -prune, you can take a look at this post, self-citation, I know...

Hope this helps!

Hi somehow the wholename option dosent seem to work on my server.Its a solaris machine I cannot get the version number the uname -r command is giving the output as 5.I dont know how to interpret this?

colucix · 04-17-2012, 04:37 AM

Try to see if your version of find has the -path option and in this case change -wholename with -path. Otherwise you might try to restrict the search in one directory at a time, starting from those directories where the file is supposed to be, e.g.:

Code:

find /usr -type f -exec grep -i -HI "A takle" {} \;
find /opt -type f -exec grep -i -HI "A takle" {} \;

and so on.

pafoo · 04-17-2012, 10:50 AM

If it is a automated email, the script is likely in the crontab: run

Code:

crontab -l

you can also look at the /etc/aliases
you can also look where scripts are normally run which is /usr/local/bin
You can run a recursive grep on a specific directory

Code:

grep -riI "username" /myfolder
#r is recursive
#i is uncase sensitive
#I excludes binaries

Ajit Gunge · 05-03-2012, 03:02 AM

Hi I have a situation here I have seen the crontab entries using the command crontab -e but I cannto see the script say "xyz" in the list of cronjobs.So definately its being called from some of the script thats in the crontab file but I am not sure exactly which script calls "xyz".Now how can I find which script exactly calls "xyz".Is there some way to do this?Please help.