Comments on: Linux Find and Argument List Too Long

By: David Killingsworth

David Killingsworth — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:44:05 +0000

Your method works if you want to find all files. If you want to only find “log” files for example, use this:

Use the -name switch and you can match what you want.

$ find /home/username/Maildir/ -type f -name “*.log” -exec grep -l password ‘{}’ \;

By: nash

nash — Sat, 07 May 2011 00:03:58 +0000

Cheers Mate! Helped heaps. I had written a script to run on a daily cron, to cull old jpgs in a samba share for a security camera.

Thanks for all the help, without bloggers like you whats the point of open source! Keep up the good work!

Nash

By: Paul Kortman

Paul Kortman — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:51:49 +0000

George, I’m happy to help, the find command is so powerful esp combined with the exec switch, I can’t count how many scripts of mine rely on this combination nor how many times I use it in a typical day. I too had work arounds (manual) before finding this solution.

Glad this post helped!

By: GiBu GeorGe

GiBu GeorGe — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 11:26:36 +0000

Well Thanks for this.. I was trying to delete all mails from catch all (qmail rouge mails) which is 2 days old and i was hit with this error…

find /home/vpopmail/domains//Q/catchall/Maildir/new/* -mtime +2 -exec /bin/rm {} \;

with in two days it would get populated up to 70 to 90 thousand mails (spammers like us)

before this i had to do this manually now the cron works great… Thank You a Lot

By: Paul Kortman

Paul Kortman — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:36:46 +0000

Steve,

I’m happy to help. We’re all noobies at some stage. Those of us who blog about our mistakes just sounds like expert noobs!

Thanks for commenting, I know this post helps folks and I appreciate the feedback!

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:02:21 +0000

Thanks.
Find -name * bombed out when trying to clear out my clientmqueue directory (amateur mistake, I know), but your tip worked out!