noob - grep help

[fozzie]

Hi all,

Just getting into Linux after a job move and have been asked to produce a GREP string that will list all the files owned by the root user and for this list to be stored in a file called “root_owned_files”.

I understand the basics of grep but have no idea how to answer this

I would appreciate any help given

Thanks for your time

[Irithori]

hmm,
grep works *in* files or stdin.
Not directly on files.

My suggestion would be "find".

man find

[sarmed]

For example, if the file is /home/username/root_owned_files, then this could work

ls -l LOCATION | grep root > /home/username/root_owned_files

Right now, I couldn't figure out a way to locate all files in entire hard drive.

[meton_magis]

many ways to do this, depending on situation. the suggestion by sarmed will work, but it's not exact. That method will return any line from ls -l output that has the string "root" in it. including if root is the group owner (not user owner) or if the filename contains root. also, if you have a user named Sroot (even if it is a funny name) it won't work.

the suggestion of using find is probably your best bet. The -user switch will probably be the place to start, but -uid will work too (root's uid is 0 )

[sarmed]

ls -n could work too, but it not exact either

#ls --help | grep user
-n, --numeric-uid-gid like -l, but list numeric user and group IDs


the command could be ls -n | grep 0 >> /username/root_owned_files