Linux / Unix Find All The Files Owned By a Particular User / Group

H ow do I list or find all the files owned by a particular system user or group under linux or UNIX like operating systems using command line options?

You need to use the find command to search for files in a directory hierarchy. It has options that allow you to search files owned by a specific user or groups under a Unix, Linux, *BSD, Apple macOS/OS X operating systems. This page shows how to find all the files owned by a participle user or group.

Linux / Unix Find All The Files Owned By a Particular User / Group

Let us see how to use the find command to locate all files/folders owned by one or many users on Linux or Unix-like system.

Find file owned by a group

Use the following syntax to find files owned by users(s) in Linux/Unix:

find directory-location -group {group-name} -name {file-name}

Where,

directory-location : Locate the file in this directory path. -group {group-name} : Find the file belongs to group-name. -name {file-name} : The file name or a search pattern

In this example, locate or find all files belongs to a group called “ftpusers” in the /home directory:

# find /home -group ftpusers

To find all *.c file belongs to a group called “ftpusers” in /data/project directory, run:

# find /data/project -group ftpusers -name "*.c"

OR do case insensitive search:

# find /data/project -group ftpusers -iname "*.c"

Find all *.mp4 files by group vivek $ find $HOME -name "*.mp4" -group vivek

To list file in ls command format pass the -ls option to the find:

$ find $HOME -name "*.mp4" -group vivek -ls

Find file owned by user

The syntax is:

find directory-location -user {username} -name {file-name}

Where,

directory-location : Locate files or directories in this directory location. -user { user-name } : Find the file belongs to user. -name {file-name} : File name or pattern.

In this example, locate or find all file belongs to a user called “vivek” in /var directory:

# find /var -user vivek

To find all *.pl (perl files) file belongs to a user called “vivek” in /var/www directory, enter:

# find /var/www -user vivek -name "*.pl"

How to find files by users vivek and wendy ### match files only ##
# find / -type f -user vivek -o -user wendy
### match dirs only ##
# find / -type d -user vivek -o -user wendy Conclusion

You just learned how to find all of the files created by a particular user/group and display them to the screen. For more info see find command man page.

Linux: Finding/locating files with find command part # 1 Posted by: Vivek Gite

The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics viaRSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter .