Search for files only in directories you have sufficient permissions

tepez · 04-08-2007, 09:44 AM

I want to search for a file by its file name. The problem is that there are many directories in my file system which I cannot read due to insufficient permissions. Whenever such director is encountered during the search I get an annoying message.

How can I search for a file only in directories where I accurately can?

macemoneta · 04-08-2007, 10:07 AM

You can use the locate command, if your distribution runs updatedb. Otherwise, you can simply suppress the error messages from find by routing standard error to /dev/null:

find /somedir -name somename 2>/dev/null

If you have a recent desktop oriented system, it will have an indexing system based off of inotify (like beagle). You can then use the provided desktop search.