Solution Concepts

OS - Linux - Search

"Making IT happen on the
Information Superhighway"

Find

• Find: searches for a file by name, type, or date
• $find starting-directory parameters action
  $find / -name foo print
  or
  $find / -name 'fo*' -print

• -name (Search for files with a given name)
• -perm (Search for files with given permissions)
• -type (Search for files of a certain type)
• -print (Tells find to output the location to the screen)

Grep

• Grep is used to look inside the contents of one or more files to find the occurence of a specific pattern of text inside the files...For instance, you know you created a textfile that contains the word radio and stored it in your home directory.
• -c (Tells grep to display a count, instead of the actual lines)
• -v (Tells grep to look for all lines that don't have the pattern text in them)

• $ grep radio *
  or use grep to search through a pattern:
  $ grep text-pattern file-list
  $ grep text-pattern *
  $ grep "is a test" *
  $ ls -l | grep "May 12"

Is Something Installed?

• Need to be root
  Type application name then -V
• This will report the version
• It cannot work if the application is not installed
• # smbd -V

Locate

• The locate command is faster and causes less of a strain on the system because it searches through an index of all files stored on the hard drive in a file called locatedb.
• This file is usually updated daily by a cron job that runs the updatedb command. The database may be refreshed at any time by running updatedb as well. The downside to this command is that new files may not be in the database yet, or the updating of the database may consume vital system resources to bring it up to date.

• For example, searching for the location of locatedb is done using the following syntax:
  $ locate locatedb

Searching in Linux

• Searches in Linux
• Whereis: Use to find the directory where a specific Linux command resides.
  $whereis fdisk
• Locate: Searches a database of files on your system, created nightly.
  $locate xauth

• Find: Look for files by name
  $find starting-directory parameters action
  $find / -name foo print
  or
  $find / -name 'fo*' -print

View Files

• Less
  The less command allows you to scroll through data, searching for values, moving up and down through the data. The less command is far more powerful than the more command

• More
  The more command allows you to scroll through a file by line or screenful. There are far fewer options than with less.
• Cat
  Cat displays the contents of the file to the screen. If there is more information than will fit on a screen, it simply scrolls off the screen.

• Whereis identifies command locations
• $ whereis calc.exe
• $ whereis mspaint.exe