Find the files that have been changed in last 24 hours

Question

E.g., a MySQL server is running on my Ubuntu machine. Some data has been changed during the last 24 hours.

What (Linux) scripts can find the files that have been cha

Answer 1

For others who land here in the future (including myself), add a -name option to find specific file types, for instance: find /var -name "*.php" -mtime -1 -ls

Answer 2

On GNU-compatible systems (i.e. Linux):

find . -mtime 0 -printf '%T+\t%s\t%p\n' 2>/dev/null | sort -r | more

This will list files and directories that have been modified in the last 24 hours (-mtime 0). It will list them with the last modified time in a format that is both sortable and human-readable (%T+), followed by the file size (%s), followed by the full filename (%p), each separated by tabs (\t).

2>/dev/null throws away any stderr output, so that error messages don't muddy the waters; sort -r sorts the results by most recently modified first; and | more lists one page of results at a time.

Answer 3

You can do that with

find . -mtime 0

From man find:

[The] time since each file was last modified is divided by 24 hours and any remainder is discarded. That means that to match -mtime 0, a file will have to have a modification in the past which is less than 24 hours ago.

Answer 4

Another, more humane way:

find /<directory> -newermt "-24 hours" -ls

or:

find /<directory> -newermt "1 day ago" -ls

or:

find /<directory> -newermt "yesterday" -ls

Answer 5

This command worked for me

find . -mtime -1 -print

Answer 6

To find all files modified in the last 24 hours (last full day) in a particular specific directory and its sub-directories:

find /directory_path -mtime -1 -ls

Should be to your liking

The - before 1 is important - it means anything changed one day or less ago. A + before 1 would instead mean anything changed at least one day ago, while having nothing before the 1 would have meant it was changed exacted one day ago, no more, no less.