Find is a very powerful command on linux and one should know how to use it and exploit its power. I would be stating some examples here by which you guys will get a fair idea about how to use the command. First the default syntax of find. 

find pathname(s) conditions(s)

pathnames refers to the location where you are searching for the file. condtitions refers to conditions for searching the files. Conditions may be grouped by enclosing them in \( \) (escaped parentheses), negated with ! (use \! in the C shell), given as alternatives by separating them with -o, or repeated (adding restrictions to the match; usually only for -name, -type, and -perm). 

Conditions

-atime +n | -n | n

Find files that were last accessed more than n (+n), less than n (-n), or exactly n days ago. Note that find will change the access time of directories supplied as pathnames. 

-cpio dev

Take matching files and write them on device dev, using cpio. Obsolete.

-ctime +n | -n | n

Find files that were changed more than n (+n), less than n (-n), or exactly n days ago. Change refers to modification, permission or ownership changes, etc.; therefore, -ctime is more inclusive than -atime or -mtime.

-depth

Descend the directory tree, skipping directories and working on actual files first (and then the parent directories). Useful when files reside in unwritable directories (e.g., when using find with cpio).

-exec command {} \;

Run the Unix command on each file matched by find, provided command executes successfully on that file; i.e., returns a 0 exit status. When command runs, the argument {} substitutes the current file. Follow the entire sequence with an escaped semicolon (\;).  

-follow

Follow symbolic links and track the directories visited (don’t use this with -type l).

-fstype type

Find files that reside on filesystems of type type.

-group gname

Find files belonging to group gname. gname can be a group name or a group ID number. 

-inum n

Find files whose inode number is n.

-links n

Find files having n links.  

-local

Find files that physically reside on the local system.  

-ls

Display matching files with associated statistics (as if run through ls -lids).

-mount

Search for files that reside only on the same filesystem as pathname.

-mtime +n | -n | n

Find files that were last modified more than n (+n), less than n (-n), or exactly n days ago.

-name pattern

Find files whose names match pattern. Filename metacharacters may be used, but should be escaped or quoted. 

-ncpio dev

Take matching files and write them on device dev, using cpio -c. Obsolete.

-newer file

Find files that have been modified more recently than file; similar to -mtime.  

-nogroup

Find files belonging to a group not in /etc/group.

-nouser

Find files owned by a user not in /etc/passwd.  

-ok command {} \;

Same as -exec, but user must respond (with a y) before command is executed. 

-perm nnn

Find files whose permission settings (e.g., rwx) match octal number nnn exactly (e.g., 664 matches -rw-rw-r--). Use a minus sign to make a wildcard match of any specified bit (e.g., -perm -600 matches -rw******, where * can be any mode). Some systems also allow +nnn for this purpose.

-print

Print the matching files and directories, using their full pathnames.

-prune

“Prune” the directory tree of unwanted directory searches; that is, skip the directory most recently matched.

-size n[c]

Find files containing n blocks, or, if c is specified, files that are n characters (bytes) long. (One block = 512 bytes).  

-type c

Find files whose type is c. c can be:

b	Block special file
c	Character special file
d	Directory
D	Door special file, Solaris only
f	Plain file
l	Symbolic link
p	Fifo or named pipe
s	Socket

-user user

Find files belonging to a user name or ID.  

 

Examples

List all files (and subdirectories) in your home directory: 
 find $HOME -print  

List all files named chapter1 underneath the /work directory:  

find /work -name chapter1 -print  

 List “memo” files owned by ann (note the use of multiple starting paths):  

find /work /usr -name 'memo*' -user ann -print 

Search the filesystem (begin at root) for manpage directories: 

 find / -type d -name 'man*' -print

Search the current directory, look for filenames that don’t begin with a capital letter, and send them to the printer:

find . \! -name '[A-Z]*' -exec lp {} \;

Find and compress files whose names don’t end with .Z:

compress `find . -type f \! -name '*.Z' -print`

Remove all empty files on the system (prompting first):

find / -size 0 -ok rm {} \;

Skip RCS directories, but list remaining read-only files:

find . -name RCS -prune -o -perm 444 -print 

Search the system for files that were modified within the last two days (good candidates for backing up): 

 find / -mtime -2 -print

This is in continuation with the previous post of mine on Vim tips and tricks. The auto completion feature is an excellent feature of Vim. There are four types of Auto completion features of Vim:

• Word / Pattern Completion in Vi / Vim Using Ctrl-x Ctrl-n
• Line Completion in Vim using Ctrl-x Ctrl-l
• File Name Completion Using Ctrl-x Ctrl-f
• Dictionary Word Completion Using Ctrl-x Ctrl-k

Word / Pattern Completion in Vi / Vim Using Ctrl-x Ctrl-n

You can use one of the following Vim shortcut keys to choose the existing words on the file.

• CTRL-x CTRL-n : Word completion – forward
• CTRL-x CTRL-p : Word completion – backward

Typical usage for programmers and administrators:

• Complete an existing word in the file, without retyping it.
• Complete a variable name or a function name on your program or shell-scripts.

Line Completion in Vim using Ctrl-x Ctrl-l

If you want to insert an existing line, type the first few words/characters of the line, and then press the Vim shortcut keys “Ctrl+x Ctrl+l”, which will display all the lines matching that patten. Note: The second control character is a lowercase L.

Typical usage for a programmers and administrators:

• Repeat an existing line quickly in your file.
• Automatically fill first line of the function definition, when the function is already declared elsewhere in the same file.

File Name Completion Using Ctrl-x Ctrl-f

Insert the name of the file that resides anywhere on the Linux system using the short cut key “Ctrl+x Ctrl+f”.

Typical usage: When you give the path of the file name as a reference inside a document.

Dictionary Word Completion Using Ctrl-x Ctrl-k

Enable the dictionary in Vim by adding the following line to ~/.vimrc.

set dictionary+=/usr/share/dict/words

This is a great feature when you stumble for the correct spelling for a word that you are typing. After typing the first few characters, Press the Vim short cut key Ctrl-x Ctrl-k to display the matching dictionary words.

PS: Drop your comments, if you need any further clarrifications!

Well to be honest I never liked Vim before, always used to use gedit! Of late I have realized the power of the Vim editor and in love with it! To pimp your editor you just need to modify your .vimrc file, it is nothing but the configuration file. This would be located in your /home/<user-name> folder. If this file does not exist, you got to create one. I have currently done some tweaking, and will explain in multiple parts.

My vimrc file:

set nocp

syntax on

set nu

set sw=4

set ts=4

set ru

set nowrap

set spr

set bs=2

set noeb

set vb t_vb=

set expandtab

set ai

set si

map <silent> <F2> :w<CR>

map <silent> <F5> <F2>:let cmd = matchstr(getline(1), ‘[^!]*$’) . ” ” . \bufname(“%”)<CR><F6> \gg<ESC>:exe “r!” . cmd<CR><ESC>o<ESC>

map <silent> <F6> <C-W>p

map <silent> <F7> u<F6>

imap <silent> <F2> <ESC><F2>

imap <silent> <F5> <ESC><F5>

imap <silent> <F6> <ESC><F6>

imap <silent> <F7> <ESC><F7>

What does my config file do??

1) F2 - save feature (Turbo C Style)

2) Now, to execute and see the output of your scripts in the same screen, first split the windows into 2. You can do that by typing new split in the command mode! To switch between the windows, press ctrl-ww.

3) After you are done splitting, press F5 execute your script. You will see the output in the other window.

4) Press F7 to clear the output screen and return back to the script window.

5) F6- switch between the  two windows.

Remember, while executing the script i.e before pressing F5, make sure the cursor is in the script window!

A sample screenshot below:

Click to see the larger image!

Will post the next set of tweaks sometime soon.

Sorry, I have not been finding time to write any posts of late:( Anyways, here s a script which you can run to print your machine details:) No fundoo stuff, just some commands which I knew put together into a shell script!

Here is the script:

#!/bin/sh
echo -e "\nMachine information:" ; uname -a
echo -e "\nUsers logged on:" ; w -h
echo -e "\nCurrent date :" ; date
echo -e "\nMachine status :" ; uptime
echo -e "\nMemory status :" ; free
echo -e "\nFilesystem status :"; df -h

Save the above file with .sh extension. Give execute permissions for the script, by using chmod.

TIP:

If you need this command to work like a normal unix command on your terminal, then follow the steps below:

1. Save the file as machinfo.sh
2. chmod 777 machinfo.sh
3. sudo cp machinfo.sh /bin
4. Type bash in your terminal and press ENTER.
5. You can now type machinfo.sh on your terminal from now on to print your machine information

PS: Drop comments if you face any problem!

Recently i wanted to share a file to one of my friends who was on the same network and i was looking for a simple way to that and this command came into help. Here’s how you do it.

If you need a quick web server running and you don’t want to mess with setting up apache or something similar, then Python can help. Python comes with a simple builtin HTTP server. With the help of this little HTTP server you can turn any directory in your system into your web server directory. The only thing you need to have installed is Python.

Practically speaking this is very useful to share files inside your local network. Implementing this tiny but hugely useful HTTP server is very simple, its just a single line command.

Assume that I would like to share the directory /home/pradeep and my IP address is 192.168.1.2

Open up a terminal and type:
cd /home/somedir
python -m SimpleHTTPServer.py

That’s it! Now your http server will start in port 8000. You will get the message:
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000 ...

Now open a browser and type the following address:
http://192.168.1.2:8000

You can also access it via:
http://127.0.0.1:8000

If the directory has a file named index.html, that file will be served as the initial file. If there is no index.html, then the files in the directory will be listed.

If you wish to change the port that’s used start the program via:
$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8080

Well its been a very long time since I have blogged. Have been busy very lately. I recently installed Ubuntu 10.04 and it’s awsome. Ubuntu keeps getting better and better. Well found this neat Ubuntu cheat sheet on my hard drive. You can download it below:

ubunturef

Download videos from various Flash-based video hosting sites, without having to use the Flash player. Handy for saving videos for watching offline, and means you don’t have to keep upgrading Flash for sites that insist on a newer version of the player.
Includes support for the following sites/players (and more!):

* YouTube, eHow, Brightcove (used by many sites like Channel 4, Daily Telegraph …), BBC (news, etc), Metacafe, 5min, Google, fliqz, nicovideo, vimeo, Blip, Break, Collegehumor, Muzu, Sevenload, Megavideo etc etc.

* Also includes a ‘generic’ method which works on many other sites.

Installation:

sudo apt-get install libwww-mechanize-perl libxml-simple-perl
wget http://get-flash-videos.googlecode.com/files/get-flash-videos_1.21-1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i get-flash-videos_1.21-1_all.deb

get-flash-videos Syntax

get_flash_videos url..

For more info check : Project Site

Video LightBox is a free wizard program that allow you to easily embed video to your website, web page or blog with stylish popup video effect without writing a single line of code.

It’s very easy to use, just follow 3 simple steps:

1. Add Video into your Video Lightbox interface.
2. Select the template for video popup and video thumbnail appearance
3. and Publish…

With Video Lightbox, you can create nice image thumbnail for your video. On click, this thumbnail expands into a stylish overlay window containing the video. No css, html, javascript coding, no image editing, just a couple of clicks to get the your video added to the Web.

Features of Video LightBox:

1. Embed flv, mp4, 3gp video files
2. Add Youtube, Google Video, Metacafe, Vimeo, MySpace videos
3. Mac & Windows versions
4. XHTML compliant
5. Automatic thumbnail creation
6. Easy to add caption
7. A lot of gorgeous gallery themes
8. Built-in FTP

• Website: http://videolightbox.com
• Download: http://videolightbox.com/#down
• Demo : http://videolightbox.com/#demo

Whenever you try to open a windows partition in Ubuntu Karmic Koala, you are always asked to enter your password and it is very annoying. The following pop up always opens up

In order to avoid that follow the steps below:

1) Open up the terminal and type the command below
gksudo gedit /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.devicekit.disks.policy

2)Then,find out this line(should be line 34):

<allow_active>auth_admin_keep</allow_active>

and change that line to

<allow_active>yes</allow_active>

Save the file and you are done:):)

AJAX IM (“asynchronous JavaScript and xml based instant messenger”) is a browser-based instant messaging client that allow you to creates a real-time chat environment with a browser based interface. you can use it freely on your website projects or web applications.  It uses the XMLHTTP Request object in JavaScript to send and receive commands to and from the server. No refreshing of the page is ever needed for this “web application” to work, as everything is updated in real-time via JavaScript.

Ajax IM is multiplatform, multilingual instant messaging client and language files can be found in the Ajax IM website.

Requirement: PHP, MySQL

Website: http://www.ajaxim.com/

Backend Demo: http://www.ajaxim.net/

Backend Demo – User-Pass: User: test – Pass: test

Download: http://www.ajaxim.com/

This is pure awsomeness!!:)