Linux find command location

5 Ways to Find a ‘Binary Command’ Description and Location on File System

With the thousands of commands/programs available in Linux systems, knowing the type and purpose of a given command as well as its location (absolute path) on the system can be a little challenge for newbies.

Knowing a few details of commands/programs not only helps a Linux user master the numerous commands, but it also enables a user understand what operations on the system to use them for, either from the command line or a script.

Therefore, in this article we will explain to you five useful commands for showing a short description and the location of a given command.

To discover new commands on your system look into all the directories in your PATH environmental variable. These directories store all the installed commands/programs on the system.

Once you find an interesting command name, before you proceed to read more about it probably in the man page, try to gather some shallow information about it as follows.

Assuming you have echoed the values of PATH and moved into the directory /usr/local/bin and noticed a new command called fswatch (monitors file modification changes):

Find New Commands in Linux

Now let’s find out the description and location of the fswatch command using following different ways in Linux.

1. whatis Command

whatis is used to display one-line manual page descriptions of the command name (such as fswatch in the command below) you enter as an argument.

If the description is too long some parts are trimmed of by default, use the -l flag to show a complete description.

Linux whatis Command Example

2. apropos Command

apropos searches for the manual page names and descriptions of the keyword (considered a regex, which is the command name) provided.

The -l option enables showing of the compete description.

Linux apropos Command Example

By default, apropos may show an output of all matched lines, as in the example below. You can only match the exact keyword using the -e switch:

Linux apropos Command Show by Keyword

3. type Command

type tells you the full pathname of a given command, additionally, in case the command name entered is not a program that exists as a separate disk file, type also tells you the command classification:

1. Shell built-in command or
2. Shell keyword or reserved word or
3. An alias

Linux type Command Example

When the command is an alias for another command, type shows the command executed when the alias is run. Use the alias command to view all aliases created on your system:

Show All Aliases in Linux

4. which Command

which helps to locate a command, it prints the absolute command path as below:

Find Linux Command Location

Some binaries can be stored in more than one directory under the PATH, use the -a flag to show all matching pathnames.

5. whereis Command

whereis command locates the binary, source, and manual page files for the command name provided as follows:

Linux whereis Command Example

Although the commands above may be vital in finding some quick info about a command/program, opening and reading through its manual page always provides a full documentation, including a list of other related programs:

In this article, we reviewed five simple commands used to display short manual page descriptions and location of a command. You can make a contribution to this post or ask a question via the feedback section below.

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Linux / UNIX: Determine where a binary command is stored / located on file system

You can use “type” or “whereis” command to find out which command shell executes and to print binary (command) file location for specified command.

whereis command example

Display ls command location along with man page path:
whereis ls
Output:
ls: /bin/ls /usr/share/man/man1p/ls.1p.gz /usr/share/man/man1/ls.1.gz

type command example

Find out which command the shell executes:
type -a ls
Output:
ls is aliased to `ls –color=tty’
ls is /bin/ls

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Category	List of Unix and Linux commands
Documentation	help • mandb • man • pinfo
Disk space analyzers	df • duf • ncdu • pydf
File Management	cat • cp • less • mkdir • more • tree
Firewall	Alpine Awall • CentOS 8 • OpenSUSE • RHEL 8 • Ubuntu 16.04 • Ubuntu 18.04 • Ubuntu 20.04
Linux Desktop Apps	Skype • Spotify • VLC 3
Modern utilities	bat • exa
Network Utilities	NetHogs • dig • host • ip • nmap
OpenVPN	CentOS 7 • CentOS 8 • Debian 10 • Debian 8/9 • Ubuntu 18.04 • Ubuntu 20.04
Package Manager	apk • apt
Processes Management	bg • chroot • cron • disown • fg • glances • gtop • jobs • killall • kill • pidof • pstree • pwdx • time • vtop
Searching	ag • grep • whereis • which
Shell builtins	compgen • echo • printf
Text processing	cut • rev
User Information	groups • id • lastcomm • last • lid/libuser-lid • logname • members • users • whoami • who • w
WireGuard VPN	Alpine • CentOS 8 • Debian 10 • Firewall • Ubuntu 20.04

Comments on this entry are closed.

If for some reason the command you are looking for is not in your PATH you can try the locate command to find out where it might be located

i access my server through sshd using putty but after a certain period of time the port on which sshd is open is closed automatically.
i am not able to figure out this problem.
please help me thanks in advance

How to know the virsion of a binary file in UNIX?
Need unix command for the same.

Typically programs have a version command line option to print the version number. Try running ‘program -v’ or ‘program –version’. Some binary files on your system are actually a link to a specific version of that program. For example, on my system, /usr/bin/python is a link to python-2.7, so I know that I have python version 2.7. (to see if a file is a link run ‘ls -l /path/to/file’ and it will have a ‘l’ at the beginging of the line, and have an arrow at the end followed by the file that the link points to).

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Linux: Finding and Locating files with find command part # 1

Many newcomers find it difficult use the find command at shell prompt under Linux / *BSD or Solairs UNIX oses. Find is nifty tool on remote server where UNIX admin can find out lot of information too. Desktop users may find handy GNOME Search tool as a utility for finding files on system. Find command can perform a search based on a variety of search constraints. It searches through one or more directory tree(s) of a filesystem, locating files based on some user-specified criteria. By default, find returns all files below the current working directory. Further, find allows the user to specify an action to be taken on each matched file. Thus, it is an extremely powerful program for applying actions to many files. It also supports regexp matching.

GNOME Search Tool GUI Program

GNOME Search Tool is a utility for finding files on your system. To perform a basic search, you can type a filename or a partial filename, with or without wildcards. You can start this program from menus or by typing following command at shell prompt:
$ gnome-search-tool &
Internally GNOME Search Tool uses the find, grep, and locate UNIX commands. The case sensitivity of the search depends on your operating system. For example, on Linux, the find, grep, and locate commands support the -i option, so all searches are case-insensitive.

Find command syntax

• search-path : Define search path (default current directory). For example search in /home directory.
• file-names-to-search : Name of the file you wish to find. For example all c files (*.c)
• action-to-take : Action can be print file name, delete files etc. Default action is print file names.

Find command examples

Let us try out some examples.

Finding files and printing their full name

You wish to find out all *.c (all c source code) files located under /home directory, enter:
$ find /home -name «*.c»

You would like to find httpd.conf file location:
$ find / -name httpd.conf

Finding all files owned by a user

Find out all files owned by user vivek:
# find / -user vivek

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Find out all *.sh owned by user vivek:
# find / -user vivek -name «*.sh»

Finding files according to date and time

Files not accessed in a time period – It is useful to find out files that have or have not been accessed within a specified number of days. Following command prints all files not accessed in the last 7 days:
# find /home -atime +7

• -atime +7: All files that were last accessed more than 7 days ago
• -atime 7: All files that were last accessed exactly 7 days ago
• -atime -7: All files that were last accessed less than7 days ago

Finding files modified within a specified time – Display list of all files in /home directory that were not last modified less than then days ago.
# find /home -mtime -7

Finding newer (more recently) modified files

Use -newer option to find out if file was modified more recently than given file.
# find /etc/apache-perl -newer /etc/apache-perl/httpd.conf

Finding the most recent version of file

It is common practice before modifying the file is copied to somewhere in system. For example whenever I modify web server httpd.conf file I first make backup. Now I don’t remember whether I had modified the /backup.conf/httpd.conf or /etc/apache-perl/httpd.conf. You can use the find command as follows (tip you can also use ls -l command):
find / -name httpd.conf -newer /etc/apache-perl/httpd.conf

Locate command

The locate command is often the simplest and quickest way to find the locations of files and directories on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.

For example, the following command uses the star wildcard to display all files on the system that have the .c filename extension:
# locate «*.c»

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