Linux Survival Basics

Read-only, can be slow

Find the Largest CI Logs

A CI job is slow or hard to inspect because some logs are unexpectedly large.

Command

find logs/ -type f -printf '%s %p\n' | sort -nr | head -10

Before you run this

System impact: Read-only. Can create load on large logs, directories, filesystems, or process tables.

When not to use it: Do not use it for compressed logs when you need uncompressed size analysis.

Expected output

The 10 largest log files with byte counts.

System impact

Read-only, can be slow. Nothing changes. The command reports the largest log files.

Scope this to the smallest useful path or service on busy systems.

Recovery / rollback: no state is changed.

When to use it

Use when log uploads are slow or a job output is unusually noisy.

When not to use it

Do not use it for compressed logs when you need uncompressed size analysis.

Explanation-only example

Illustrated output, not a live lab run

This example is intentionally illustrative. It shows the command shape without killing real processes or changing your machine.

demo@lab:~$

$ find logs/ -type f -print

logs/unit.log
logs/integration.log
logs/build.log
logs/test.log

$ find logs/ -type f -printf '%s %p\n' | sort -nr | head -10

1200 logs/integration.log
130 logs/build.log
81 logs/test.log
6 logs/unit.log

View commands shown

These are the commands shown in the sanitized transcript.

Commands shown

find logs/ -type f -print
find logs/ -type f -printf '%s %p\n' | sort -nr | head -10

next steps

Related commands

Linux Survival Basics Can be slow

Find the Files Eating Your Disk

The disk was full, but guessing at folders was the slow part.

find /var -type f -printf '%s %p\n' | sort -nr | head -20

Linux Survival Basics Can be slow

Show Big Files in Human Units

Byte counts are precise. Human units are faster under pressure.

find /var -type f -printf '%s %p\n' | sort -nr | head -10 | awk '{printf "%.1f MB %s\n", $1/1024/1024, $2}'

Linux Survival Basics Can be slow

Count Source Files by Extension

A quick extension count can show whether expected content made it into the source tree.

find source -type f -printf '%f\n' | sed -n 's/.*\.//p' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr

Linux Survival Basics Can be slow

Count Failures by Test File

Turn noisy test logs into a ranked failure list.

Hosting Operations Can be slow

List Largest Files in a Backup

Large backup files are where storage surprises usually start.

find backup -type f -printf '%s %p\n' | sort -nr | head

Study mapping

Use this as independent command practice: read the notes, predict the output, then compare it with the example before using a real shell.

Find the Largest CI Logs

Before you run this

Expected output

System impact

When to use it

When not to use it

Illustrated output, not a live lab run

Commands shown

Related commands

Find the Files Eating Your Disk

Show Big Files in Human Units

Count Source Files by Extension

Count Failures by Test File

List Largest Files in a Backup

Useful for