Linux find command

[Raz316]

I've always been a bit unsure about this just being 'me' or not. But it seems like half the time I try to find on a linux box, it just sort of dies. With Windows it will always (eventually) get to the end of its search, but I've had a linux find search going for about 10 minutes now (granted it is over ssh and using a wildcard, but that shouldn't change too much on the actual search at all, right?). The 'top' command suggests it is actually doing stuff as well.

Has anyone else ever had this? (it's on an ext3 partition)

[burble]

The time it takes will depend massively on the path you're searching in (find / -name is a killer) and the amount of files within that path.

I don't remember having a search take 10 minutes though.

[Raz316]

Cheers Burble,

I guess there are quite alot of files (as its a backup of our shared data directory) but it's not searching the whole system

find /remote-backup/ -name '*woop.sxw'

it's still going as well. (edit: and just to clarify, remote-backup is a local folder, not a network mounted one)

[directhex]

some filesystems are slower than others, some searches are slower than others

a handy function is "locate", which behaves much like find but uses a cached list of all the files on the system. "updatedb" updates its list, and is often in an overnight cron job

[Raz316]

aha thank you! I'll give it a go

[peterb]

One of the strengths (and irritations!) of Linux - so many ways of doing things - some better than others in diifferent situations. I have only just started using the locate function (after 3 years) It is just so much faster! (But at the risk of missing new stuff if the database hasn't updated)

[JIM_BOB7813]

whereis is also quite useful

[Raz316]

perfik, it appears the slocate database is built through cron.daily

thank you all