How do I remove “permission denied” printout statements from the find program?

Question

find: `/root/.dbus': Permission denied
find: `/root/.gconf': Permission denied
find: `/root/.gconfd': Permission denied
find: `/root/.gnome': Permission denied
find: `/root/.gnome2': Permission denied
find: `/root/.gnome2_private': Permission denied

E.g. output like this when I run the "find / -name netcdf" command

Answer 1

Those messages are sent to stderr, and pretty much only those messages are generally seen on that output stream. You can close it or redirect it on the command-line.

$ find / -name netcdf 2>&-

or

$ find / -name netcdf 2>/dev/null

Also, if you are going to search the root directory (/), then it is often good to nice the process so find doesn't consume all the resources.

$ nice find / -name netcdf 2>&-

This decreases the priority of the process allowing other processes more time on the CPU. Of course if nothing else is using the CPU, it doesn't do anything. :) To be technical, the NI value (seen from ps -l) increase the PRI value. Lower PRI values have a higher priority. Compare ps -l with nice ps -l.

Answer 2

Use locate(1) instead:

$ locate netcdf

It will only show you files your user can see.