What's a good find program?

[jacatone]

I installed kfind, but it doesn't seem to find anything even when I specify / as the search location. Also, tried Beagle, but that didn't work either. Thanks.

[integr8e]

Re: What's a good find program?

I'm not sure about GUI applications, but whenever I need to find something, I use the find command:

sudo find / -name xorg.conf

You must use 'sudo' if you're searching /root directories to give the application administrative privileges. 'find' is the application you're running, '/' tells it to look in all locations following '/', '-name' tells it you're looking for files that match the following name, and 'xorg.conf' tells find you want the locations of all files named 'xorg.conf'.

Likewise, if you just want to search your /home directory for all files that end with 'deb', you would change it to look like the following:

find /home -name *deb

The asterisk ( * ) is used as a wildcard, telling find to return all files that contain 'deb' at their end (using *deb* would look for all files that have 'deb' somewhere in their names, whether they be 'bibletime.deb' or 'abcdebfg.txt'). You don't need 'sudo' here because you don't need root privileges to look through your /home directory.

[jacatone]

Re: What's a good find program?

Still not working. I downloaded a copy of "gnome-ppp" and tried every different variation I could imagine and nothing. Then tried "folder_green" to find where the folder icons are kept. Still nothing.

[integr8e]

Re: What's a good find program?

Try this:

find /home -name gnome-ppp*

[Snowhog]

Re: What's a good find program?

I use:

sudo find -mount -name target

The -mount option:

Don’t descend directories on other filesystems.

Works like a charm.

[y0sh3]

Re: What's a good find program?

Hi

I use two commands to find something, works almost all the time, and with a little extra command, works everytime.

First: type 'sudo updatedb' in your console.
This will "update" the database and all it's entries, directories, files, etc. On an EXT3 file system I believe this happens automatically every once in a while.

Second: type 'locate "whatever you want to find"' without quotes of course - unless you need them for special characters. Whether it's files or directories this should find what you're looking for. I found that if you want to get more specific in your search, if you find you got too many results you can can combine the 'locate' command with 'grep' in which case you narrow your results. Such as:

'locate song | grep .mp3'

That will find a file or directory or song named 'song' and filter it to show only those that include '.mp3'

Good luck!

One last thing: these commands are still case sensitive of course, as with all unix. So be careful.

[jacatone]

Re: What's a good find program?

Very cool y0sh3, thanks a million. Does the "sudo updatedb" command work permanently, or would I have to run it every time I wanted to do a search?

[yulester]

Re: What's a good find program?

The man page doesn't say.

Run at command line / console

man updatedb

It's a quick man page that kinda tells you what the updatedb command does and it's options

- - - - Interesting!!

[kubicle]

Re: What's a good find program?

The updatedb command is run automatically daily via /etc/cron.daily/mlocate script (*buntus switched from slocate to mlocate in hardy). If you're looking for files that might have changed during the last 24 hours, then it's safer to run 'sudo updatedb' manually first to make sure you get accurate results.