q09-find-files-with-properties-and-perform-actions

Énoncé§

Solve this question on: data-001

There is a backup folder on server data-001 at /var/backup/backup-015, it needs to be cleaned up.

First:

• Delete all files modified before 01/01/2020 Then for the remaining:
• Find all files smaller than 3KiB and move these to /var/backup/backup-015/small/
• Find all files larger than 10KiB and move these to /var/backup/backup-015/large/
• Find all files with permission 777 and move these to /var/backup/backup-015/compromised/

Solution§

First we find the backup location:

ssh data-001
root@data-001:~$ cd /var/backup/backup-015
root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ ls | grep backup | wc -l
300

Seems to contain good amount of files! Now we need to clean it up. A good way for this is to use find with arguments and a command to execute, like:

find -exec echo {} ; # will find all files and runs “echo FILE” for each

find -exec echo {} +  # will find all files and runs “echo FILE1 FILE2 FILE3 …”

man find # search for “exec” to see info and explanation

man find # search for “-newerXY” to find files “newer than date”

Delete files before date

Using this we can delete all files created before 2020. Always “debug” a command first by just listing without executing a command:

root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ find ! -newermt "01/01/2020" -type f
...
root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ find ! -newermt "01/01/2020" -type f | wc -l
21
root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ find ! -newermt "01/01/2020" -type f -exec rm {} \;
root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ ls | grep backup | wc -l
279 # 21 deleted

Move small files

Now we move all small files into the subfolder:

root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ find -maxdepth 1 -size -3k -type f # find
...
root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ find -maxdepth 1 -size -3k -type f | wc -l
24
root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ find -maxdepth 1 -size -3k -type f -exec mv {} ./small \; # move

Move large files

Next we move all larger files into the subfolder:

root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ find -maxdepth 1 -size +10k -type f # find
...
root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ find -maxdepth 1 -size +10k -type f | wc -l
11
root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ find -maxdepth 1 -size +10k -type f -exec mv {} ./large \; # move

Move open permission files

And finally we move all files with too open permissions into the subfolder:

root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ find -maxdepth 1 -perm 777 -type f # find
...
root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ find -maxdepth 1 -perm 777 -type f | wc -l
12
root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ find -maxdepth 1 -perm 777 -type f -exec mv {} ./compromised \; # move

Result§

root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ ls | grep backup | wc -l
232
root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ ls small/ | wc -l
24
root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ ls large/ | wc -l
11
root@data-001:/var/backup/backup-015$ ls compromised/ | wc -l
12