[lug] Filename star

[Subba Rao]

On  0, Walter Pienciak <walter at frii.com> wrote:
> 
> To find all files named * on your system, you can do
> 
>   find / -print | grep \*
> 
> To find out what is creating them, well, that's going to be more fun.
> No one knows your system the way you do, and so most suggestions will
> be general.
> 
> - Does the user, group, or time of creation give you any clue as to
>   the culprit?  For example, if the files are owned by various users,
>   which of those programs you mentioned do they have in common?  If
>   if all such files are owned by one user, which one?  nobody?  you?  root?
>   Which of those programs you mentioned run as that user?
> 
> - Are they created again and again?  At the same time?  Always?  Look
>   in your crontabs.  At different times?  What were you doing then?
> 
> If you really start going insane, run that find command out of cron
> $SOME_REASONABLE_FREQUENCY and pipe the results to mail.  Maybe if you're
> notified quickly of its creation, you'll be able to remember exactly
> what was occurring on the system when the file turd was dropped.
> 
>     find / -print | grep \* | mail your_username
> 
> And if the files are always being created in the same directories, you
> can tune the find command and go a bit easier on your hard drive.
> 
> No guarantees, but maybe this will give you some ideas.
> 

Thanks for the suggestions. When I am uncertain about the files to be deleted,
I prefer to use the '-i' option. That would atleast guarantee the safety of my
other files. I have learnt quite a bit too, regarding the various techniques to
delete the meta-character named files.

I guess it is time to implement the 'wastebasket' idea on linux users $HOME.

Thanks everyone.

Subba Rao
subb3 at attglobal.net
http://pws.prserv.net/truemax/

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