Is there a way to tell if grep is doing anything?

[iansane]

Hi,

I'm running grep to search for a string in my wordpress directory. It seems to just be sitting there not doing anything. I've let it run for an hour and am thinking that is way to long to just read through the website files.

I have it piping to cat to a file and there's nothing in the file but is this just because it hasn't found the string yet?

What's the best way to tell if it's doing anything or just sitting there?

Here's the command I'm running.

sudo grep -i -n "contactform" | cat >> contactform.txt

Thanks

[iponeverything]

use ps to get the pid of the grep process and attach an strace process to the running grep process.

[iansane]

use ps to get the pid of the grep process and attach an strace process to the running grep process.

Ok, I did this

lotus@lotus-laptop:/var/www/vulcan$ ps -C grep
PID TTY TIME CMD
4686 pts/0 00:00:00 grep

then this

sudo strace -p 4686

and get this

Process 4686 attached - interrupt to quit
read(0,


What does this mean?

Thanks

[Simian Man]

You never gave grep a file(s) to do the search on. When it's not given a file as parameter, grep waits for its input from the keyboard which is why it seems to hang.

Change your command to something like:

sudo grep -i -n -r . "contactform" | cat >> contactform.txt
To search all files in the directory.

BTW I don't think you need sudo unless the files are not readable except by the owner - which is rare.

[lykwydchykyn]

To watch the progress as it searches, you could also use tee. The use of cat is also superfluous here.

Try this command:


grep -inr "contactform" . |tee contactform.txt

[iansane]

You never gave grep a file(s) to do the search on. When it's not given a file as parameter, grep waits for its input from the keyboard which is why it seems to hang.

Change your command to something like:

sudo grep -i -n -r . "contactform" | cat >> contactform.txt
To search all files in the directory.

BTW I don't think you need sudo unless the files are not readable except by the owner - which is rare.

I had read on a geeks article it would search all files without the -r but adding the -r makes more sense.

However, I'm still getting the same result after re-attaching strace.

[iansane]

oh, grep is still reading from the terminal input even with the -r in the command.

I just realized what you meant about it waiting for input and typed "hello"
Now the strace shows

read(0, "hello\n", 32768) = 6

So, why is grep reading from terminal input?

Thanks

[Simian Man]

Did you remember the "." That tells it to search all files in the current directory. If you want only some files, you can list them, but you need to tell it where to search somehow or else it falls back to stdin.

[iansane]

Did you remember the "." That tells it to search all files in the current directory. If you want only some files, you can list them, but you need to tell it where to search somehow or else it falls back to stdin.

I thought that was a typo because with the "." it gives me a error.

grep: contactform: No such file or directory

To clarify, I'm looking for the string "contactform" inside any file, not as the name of a file. This seems like it thinks I'm looking for a file name. Is that what I'm doing here?

Here's the article where I found the command that just uses -i -n and no -r
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/find-files-containing-search-terms-on-ubuntu/

[lykwydchykyn]

The search term comes before the directory/file(s) you want to search, as in the command I posted. SimianMan's command has it backwards.

You're telling grep "search for a dot in 'contactform'", which of course doesn't exist.

[iansane]

The search term comes before the directory/file(s) you want to search, as in the command I posted. SimianMan's command has it backwards.

You're telling grep "search for a dot in 'contactform'", which of course doesn't exist.

Thanks lykwydchykyn,

I missed your first reply. Yep it's working now.

iponeverything,
Thanks for the ps and strace info.

Simmian Man,
Thanks even if it was backwards :-)

[Simian Man]

Thanks even if it was backwards :-)

Sorry, I was going off memory.