Duplicate file finder ubuntu how to#
Duplicate file finder ubuntu install#

$ sudo yum install fslint <- RedHat / CentOS First of all FSlint will need to be installed: $ sudo apt-get install fslint <- Unbuntu Here we will explore how it can be used to find duplicate files, using the CLI, though there is a GUI mode available also. Find Duplicate Files using FSlintįSlint can be used search for and remove duplicate files, empty directories or files with incorrect names. Next we will take a look at another tool for finding duplicate files, fslint.

Duplicate file finder ubuntu how to#

So, that’s how to find and remove duplicate files on Linux using fdupes. My resultant directory listing now looks like this, with all the duplicates removed: $ ls -lahĭrwxrwxr-x 2 cloud_user cloud_user 4.0K Dec 15 13:49. Set 1 of 3, preserve files (12 bytes each):Īlternatively, the -N option can be used, which will preserve the first file out of each set, but won’t prompt: $ fdupes -SdN. When you run this, you will be prompted for which file you wish to keep out of each set of duplicates that have been identified: $ fdupes -Sd. I’d suggest using caution before deleting anything unless you are absolutely sure it is safe to do so, and that you have a backup to recover from if you need to! That said, you can delete duplicate files using fdupes by using the -d option. For example: $ fdupes -S /home/clouduser/documents /home/clouduser/backup Delete duplicate files using fdupesįdupes has an option to allow you to delete the duplicates you find. Īlternatively, you can specify the directories you want to target, if you what to check multiple directories. To have fdupes find duplicates recursively the -r option can be used: $ fdupes -Sr. Searching in a single directory can be useful, but sometimes we may have duplicate files buried in layers of sub-directories. Using fdupes to search for duplicate files recursively or in multiple directories ħ duplicate files (in 3 sets), occupying 102 bytes. We can use the -m option to get this information, or summary: $ fdupes -Sm. fdupes has grouped all identical files within this directory together which shows that text1.txt for example, is identical to test2.txt. I’ve used the -S switch to also output the file size. So what happens if we now run fdupes in this directory? $ fdupes -S. I created the files by echoing the same words into each group of files, this is a quick and easy way to generate a bunch of identical files: $ for i in. Likewise for the config.txt files and the test.txt files. File1 – 4 all have the exact same content. rw-rw-r- 1 cloud_user cloud_user 12 Dec 15 11:48 test2.txtĪll the files starting with the same word – e.g. rw-rw-r- 1 cloud_user cloud_user 12 Dec 15 11:48 test1.txt rw-rw-r- 1 cloud_user cloud_user 18 Dec 15 11:56 file4.txt rw-rw-r- 1 cloud_user cloud_user 18 Dec 15 11:56 file3.txt rw-rw-r- 1 cloud_user cloud_user 18 Dec 15 11:56 file2.txt rw-rw-r- 1 cloud_user cloud_user 18 Dec 15 11:56 file1.txt rw-rw-r- 1 cloud_user cloud_user 12 Dec 15 11:48 config4.txt rw-rw-r- 1 cloud_user cloud_user 12 Dec 15 11:48 config3.txt rw-rw-r- 1 cloud_user cloud_user 12 Dec 15 11:48 config2.txt rw-rw-r- 1 cloud_user cloud_user 12 Dec 15 11:48 config1.txt My directory listing looks like this: $ ls -lahĭrwxrwxr-x 2 cloud_user cloud_user 4.0K Dec 15 11:56. Lets say we have a bunch of text files in a directory, and we want to find any which are duplicates. But, how do we use fdupes to find duplicate files? Find Duplicate Files using fdupes Examples OK, so that’s how to install fdupes on Linux. We can confirm it is installed and working by running the fdupes version command: $ fdupes -version To install fdupes on Ubuntu systems you can use: $ sudo apt-get install fdupes Or, on recent systems you may need to use dnf install fdupes. Once done, to install fdupes use: $ yum install fdupes To install fdupes on RedHat, CentOS or Fedora, you will first need to enable the epel respository: $ yum install epel-release In this section we will look at how to install fdupes and how to use fdupes to find duplicate files on Linux. fdupes uses a number of techniques to determine if a file is a duplicate of another. Using fdupes to search for duplicate files recursively or in multiple directoriesįdupes is a Linux tool which is able to find duplicate files in a specified directory or group of directories.Find Duplicate Files using fdupes Examples.How to Find Duplicate Files with fdupes.