Question: I recently took over some server infrastructure from a recently left server admin. I am a Rails dev, not a server admin per se.

I would like to find the files that were stored on the server and download them.

I have been given the private key, and was able to SSH into the main ubuntu EC2 instance.

I have no idea where to look.

How do I find a folder with all the files uploaded? They are largely images (jpg, gif, png) and documents (pdf, doc, xls, txt, etc.).

How can I easily find the directory where these things are stored, and how can I download them to my local machine?

I am hoping I can actually get access to the files like this. I saw the instance labeled "File Server (Production)" in the AWS web console.

We also have EBS volumes and snapshots...so if this doesn't work, then that is my next stop. But I figured I would at least work from here.

**Edit 1**

For what it's worth, it is an instance of Ubuntu .

**Edit 2**

I found the directory I want by doing `df -h`. It is in my `/var/www/files`. What I want to do now is zip up the entire folder and download it locally. How do I do that?

Answer: 
The easiest way is to login and search for some ruby or document files if you don't know where they are. 

```
find / -name "*.rb"

```

Then you should get some ruby files with the path. Its possible that you get a lot of system files. You can change that pattern from `*.rb` to another one for example `*.doc` to find some docs.
For Elastic Beanstalk (which still uses EC2 instace, but in "auto create mode"), the path to PHP app is `/var/app/current/`. This is on Amazon Linux AMI.