find a file using the terminal

Question

I am trying to find a directory, using the terminal and I am not sure where it is. I mean that i used the wget command to obtain the file and used it for installation and now i am not able to find where I kept it.

I did try,

find . -type f -name "postgis-2.0.0"

also

locate postgis-2.0.0

But with no luck. What is the command to find a directory in your desktop?

Answer 1

Try find ~/ -type f -name "postgis-2.0.0" instead.

Using . will only search the current directory. ~/ will search your entire home directory (likely where you downloaded it to). If you used wget as root, its possible it could be somewhere else so you could use / to search the whole filesystem.

Goodluck

Answer 2

I would try:

sudo find / -type d -name "postgis-2.0.0"

The . means search only in the current directory, it is best to search everything from root if you really don't know. Also, type -f means search for files, not folders. Adding sudo allows it to search in all folders/subfolders.

Your syntax for locate is correct, but you may have to run

sudo updatedb

first. For whatever reason, I never have good luck with locate though.

Answer 3

find is one of the most useful Linux/Unix tools.

Try find . -type d | grep DIRNAME