First day on the server

~30 min

Not running Starting usually ~20 s

Situation

Your first day on a new server. The previous admin moved to another project and put everything he had been working on into ~/handover — all mixed up, across different subdirectories. His parting note: "There are the configs, my srvstat tool and the nightly deploy log deploy.log. The log shows which services deploy worst — start with those."

Task

Sort things out into directories under ~/server so that:

~/server/conf holds every *.conf config from ~/handover with its contents unchanged — and nothing else;
the deploy log sits at ~/server/logs/deploy.log;
~/server/failed-by-service.txt has, for each service with failed deploys, their number and the service name — one line per service, separated by a space, the most frequent first;
the srvstat tool sits in ~/server/bin and is found by name in a new shell.

The check opens a new shell, as on a fresh login: a setting made only in the open terminal is invisible to it.

Lab goals

0 of 4

~/server/conf holds every *.conf config from ~/handover, unchanged, and nothing else — not checked yet
The deploy log sits at ~/server/logs/deploy.log — not checked yet
~/server/failed-by-service.txt lists the failed deploy count and service, most frequent first — not checked yet
srvstat sits in ~/server/bin and is found by name in a new shell — not checked yet

Hints

0 of 3 open · they open one at a time

Hint 1

Show the solution after 3 failed checks

Files and directories · picked for this lab

find — searching for files

Cheat sheet

$_ — insert into the terminal

find /etc -name nginx.conf exact name, search from /etc
find ~ -type f -name site.conf files only, no directories
find . -name "*.log" by pattern (quote the pattern!)
find . -type f -size +100M large files
find . -mtime -1 modified in the last day
find . -name "*.tmp" -delete delete (test without -delete first!)
find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} + mode 644 for every file found
find . -printf '%s %p\n' | sort -rn | head top by size
find . -path './node_modules' -prune -o -name '*.js' -print excluding a directory

Below are the main conditions and actions of find; the full list is in man find.

Conditions

bash

find . -name "*.conf"             # by name (case-sensitive)
find . -iname "*.JPG"             # case-insensitive
find . -regex '.*/.*\.(log|tmp)'  # by a regex on the full path
find . -type f                    # files only (d for directories, l for links)
find . -size +100M                # larger than 100 MB (-100k smaller than 100 KB)
find . -mtime -1                  # modified in the last day (-mmin -10 for 10 minutes)
find . -newer /tmp/marker         # newer than a marker file
find . -user alice -group devs    # owner/group
find . -perm -4000                # SUID files (security audit)
find . -empty                     # empty files/directories
find /home -xdev -name '*.iso'    # don't cross mount points
find . -path './node_modules' -prune -o -name '*.js' -print   # skip a directory

Actions

bash

find . -name "*.tmp" -delete                      # delete the matches
find . -name "*.log" -mtime +30 -delete           # logs older than 30 days
find . -type f -name "*.sh" -exec chmod +x {} +   # make them executable (+ = batched)
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} +               # permissions on directories
find . -name "*.conf" -exec grep -l TODO {} +     # grep across the matches
find . -name "*.bak" -ok rm {} \;                 # -ok = ask for confirmation
find . -name "*.bak" -print0 | xargs -0 rm        # via xargs (names with spaces)
find . -type f -printf '%s %p\n' | sort -rn | head # the largest files (-printf)

{} + batches arguments (faster), {} \; runs one at a time. -print0/xargs -0 are safe for names with spaces (see xargs).

"Permission denied" clutters the output

Drop the errors: find / -name foo 2>/dev/null.

It searches too deep / across other filesystems

-maxdepth N limits the depth (put it BEFORE other conditions); -xdev avoids crossing mount points (see mount).

Accidentally deleted the wrong thing with `-delete`

Always run it without an action first (just the listing), confirm the list, then add -delete/-exec rm. -delete implies -depth — the order of conditions matters.

find with -name finds nothing

The pattern must be quoted ("*.log"), otherwise the shell expands it before find sees it. For case-insensitivity, use -iname.

-exec is slow

{} \; runs the command once per file. Switch to {} + (batched) or xargs.