This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org: --- Title : Bash script to list all changed files in certain period Author : Remy van Elst Date : 13-05-2012 URL : https://raymii.org/s/software/List-all-changed-files-in-a-certain-period.html Format : Markdown/HTML --- This is a little script I wrote and use to get a daily report of all the files that have changed on my servers. What it does is list all the files that are modified within a certain time period from a given directory. It can also be run from a desktop machine, or any machine which runs bash, find and ls. Usage is simple, save the script, chmod +x it, then run (./report.sh). If you want a specific directory to be scanned run it like ./report.sh /var/www/my/dir

Recently I removed all Google Ads from this site due to their invasive tracking, as well as Google Analytics. Please, if you found this content useful, consider a small donation using any of the options below:

I'm developing an open source monitoring app called Leaf Node Monitoring, for windows, linux & android. Go check it out!

Consider sponsoring me on Github. It means the world to me if you show your appreciation and you'll help pay the server costs.

You can also sponsor me by getting a Digital Ocean VPS. With this referral link you'll get $200 credit for 60 days. Spend $25 after your credit expires and I'll get $25!

This is the script: #!/bin/bash ### Copyright (c) 2012 Remy van Elst #Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy #of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal #in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights #to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell #copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is #furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: # #The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in #all copies or substantial portions of the Software. # #THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR #IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, #FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE #AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER #LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, #OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN #THE SOFTWARE. #Change these values to your need #Exclude hidden directories, 0=exclude,1=include HIDDEN=0 #Time parameter in days for modified files MTIME="-1" #Directory to look for files, if unset use current dir FILEDIR=$1 if [ -z "$FILEDIR" ]; then FILEDIR="./"; fi SVERSION="0.2" HOSTPC=`hostname` HOSTUSER=`whoami` #Now do the find thing case "$HIDDEN" in 0) echo "Reporting all files modified in last "$MTIME" period in directory "$FILEDIR" for system "$HOSTPC", running as user "$HOSTUSER" excluding hidden files." echo "Date: `date`" echo "START OF FILE REPORT" find $FILEDIR -type f -mtime $MTIME ! -path "*/.*" | xargs -r ls -lh 2>/dev/null echo "END OF FILE REPORT" echo "Report script version $SVERSION by raymii.org" ;; 1) echo "Reporting all files modified in last "$MTIME" period in directory "$FILEDIR" for system "$HOSTPC", running as user "$HOSTUSER"." echo "Date: `date`" echo "START OF FILE REPORT" find $FILEDIR -type f -mtime $MTIME | xargs -r ls -lh 2>/dev/null echo "END OF FILE REPORT" echo "Report script version $SVERSION by raymii.org" ;; esac #END OF SCRIPT Sample output looks like this: remy@USN4 ~/test $ ./report.sh ~ Reporting all files modified in last "-1" period in directory "/home/remy" for system "USN4" excluding hidden files. Date: Fri Mar 30 13:20:59 CEST 2012 START OF FILE REPORT -rw-rw-r-- 1 remy remy 6 2012-03-30 12:54 /home/remy/hoi.test -rw-rw-r-- 1 remy remy 0 2012-03-30 12:55 /home/remy/test/hallo -rw-rw-r-- 1 remy remy 0 2012-03-30 12:55 /home/remy/test/i -rw-rw-r-- 1 remy remy 0 2012-03-30 13:15 /home/remy/test/me.f -rwxrwxr-x 1 remy remy 1.2K 2012-03-30 13:20 /home/remy/test/report.sh END OF FILE REPORT Report script version 0.2 by raymii.org If you want to filter out certain directories you can add grep to the find line in the script to filter out directories: find $FILEDIR -type f -mtime $MTIME ! -path "*/.*" | grep -v "/sys/" | grep -v "/proc/" | grep -v "/run/" | grep -v "/dev/" | xargs -r ls -lh 2>/dev/null The above command wil filter out the /sys/ /proc/ /run/ and /dev/ directories. Edit it to your needs. I've got a crontab like this, it saves it to the /var/log/freport/ directory so you can check it later or email it: 00 */8 * * * /root/report.sh / > /var/log/freport/filereport`date +%F`.txt [1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212 --- License: All the text on this website is free as in freedom unless stated otherwise. This means you can use it in any way you want, you can copy it, change it the way you like and republish it, as long as you release the (modified) content under the same license to give others the same freedoms you've got and place my name and a link to this site with the article as source. This site uses Google Analytics for statistics and Google Adwords for advertisements. You are tracked and Google knows everything about you. Use an adblocker like ublock-origin if you don't want it. All the code on this website is licensed under the GNU GPL v3 license unless already licensed under a license which does not allows this form of licensing or if another license is stated on that page / in that software: This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see . Just to be clear, the information on this website is for meant for educational purposes and you use it at your own risk. I do not take responsibility if you screw something up. Use common sense, do not 'rm -rf /' as root for example. If you have any questions then do not hesitate to contact me. See https://raymii.org/s/static/About.html for details.