Linux command to find files changed in last n seconds

Question

Linux command to find files changed in last n seconds. Please suggest shell script,that we can run from cli or command.

Answer 1

Use find command like this:

find . -name "*.txt" -mtime -60s

To find all *.txt files modified in last 60 seconds.

Answer 2

Similar to what glenn suggested, if you want to find everything modified, say, in the time during which an installer process was running, it might be easier to do something like:

touch /tmp/checkpoint
<do installer stuff>
find / -newer /tmp/checkpoint

Then you don't have to do the time calculation; you just find things changed after the checkpoint file.

Answer 3

If you're monitoring a directory for changes to files, you probably want to use inotify-tools instead of some infinite polling loop.

Answer 4

If you have a version of find that doesn't support -mtime -60s then a better solution is

touch -d '-60 seconds' /tmp/newerthan
find . -name "*.txt" -newer /tmp/newerthan