Unix/Linux Find Files and Directories Owned by a Particular User(5 Useful Examples)

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In this article, I will take you through 5 Useful Examples to find Find Files and Directories Owned by a Particular User in Linux/Unix based Systems. You might sometimes get into a situation where you need to find files and directories owned by a particular user in Linux/Unix based Systems. This can be easily done by using find command in Linux/Unix based systems. You can even find files based on file name or by using search pattern as explained below using various examples.

Unix/Linux Find Files and Directories Owned by a Particular User(5 Useful Examples) 1

Unix/Linux Find Files and Directories Owned by a Particular User

Also Read: Unix/Linux md5sum Command Examples to Verify Checksum

Example 1: How to Find a Particular File Owned by a Particular User

If you want to find a particular file owned by a particular user then you can use below find command. In this example, we are looking for hello.txt file owned by user centos using find / -user centos -name hello.txt command.

[root@localhost ~]# find / -user centos -name hello.txt
/root/hello.txt

/ : Search all the files under / path.

-user : File is owned by user. More can be checked on Find command Man Page

-name : Base of file name (the path with the leading directories removed) matches shell pattern pattern.

NOTE:

Please note that here I am using root user to run all the below commands.You can use any user with sudo access to run all these commands. For more information Please check Step by Step: How to Add User to Sudoers to provide sudo access to the User.

Example 2: How to Find All the Files and Directories Owned by a Particular User

If you want to find all the files and directories owned by a particular user then you can simply use below find command. In this example, we are looking for all the files and directories owned by user centos using find / -user centos command.

[root@localhost ~]# find / -user centos
/root/hello
/root/example
/root/example/hello.rs
/root/example/hello
/root/hello.txt
/root/example.txt
/var/spool/mail/centos
/home/centos
/home/centos/.bash_logout
/home/centos/file
/home/centos/.bash_history
/home/centos/example.txt
/home/centos/.bash_profile
/home/centos/.bashrc
/home/centos/output.txt
/home/centos/CentOS.ISO
/home/centos/.Xauthority

Example 3: How to Only Find the Files Owned by a Particular User

If you only want to find the files owned by a particular user and not the directories then you need to use -type f option with find command as shown below. In this example, we are only looking for the files owned by user centos using find / -user centos -type f command.

[root@localhost ~]# find / -user centos -type f
/root/example/hello.rs
/root/example/hello
/root/hello.txt
/root/example.txt
/var/spool/mail/centos
/home/centos/.bash_logout
/home/centos/.bash_history
/home/centos/example.txt
/home/centos/.bash_profile
/home/centos/.bashrc
/home/centos/output.txt
/home/centos/CentOS.ISO
/home/centos/.Xauthority

-type : File is of block, character, regular file, symbolic link etc. More can be checked on Find command Man Page.

There is another way which you can use to find all the files owned by a particular user. In this way, you need to use wildcard character(*) with -name option to search all the files under / partition.

[root@localhost ~]# find / -user centos -type f -name "*"
/root/example/hello.rs
/root/example/hello
/root/hello.txt
/root/example.txt
/var/spool/mail/centos
/home/centos/.bash_logout
/home/centos/.bash_history
/home/centos/example.txt
/home/centos/.bash_profile
/home/centos/.bashrc
/home/centos/output.txt
/home/centos/CentOS.ISO
/home/centos/.Xauthority

Example 4: How to Find All .txt Files owned by a Particular User

If you want to find a certain type of files instead of looking for all the files then you can use below find command in Linux. In this example, we are looking for all .txt files owned by user centos using find / -user centos -name "*.txt" command.

[root@localhost ~]# find / -user centos -name "*.txt"
/root/hello.txt
/root/example.txt
/home/centos/example.txt
/home/centos/output.txt

Example 5: How to Find all the directories owned by a Specific User

If you want to find all the directories owned by a Specific user then there are two ways you can find that. One way is by using below find command where you don’t have to specify the -name option to search all the directories by default. In this example we are searching all the directories owned by user centos using find / -user centos -type d command.

[root@localhost ~]# find / -user centos -type d
/root/example
/home/centos
/home/centos/file

The other way which you can also use to find all the directories owned by a Specific user using below find command where you can specify star(*) with -name option to search all the directories. Both commands can be used interchangeably.

[root@localhost ~]# find / -user centos -type d -name "*"
/root/example
/home/centos
/home/centos/file

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