I used the below command to delete files older than a year.
find /path/* -mtime +365 -exec rm -rf {} \;
But now I want to delete all files whose modified time is older than 01 Jan 2014. How do I do this in Linux?
This works for me:
find /path ! -newermt "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS" | xargs rm -rf
You can touch your timestamp as a file and use that as a reference point:
e.g. for 01-Jan-2014:
touch -t 201401010000 /tmp/2014-Jan-01-0000
find /path -type f ! -newer /tmp/2014-Jan-01-0000 | xargs rm -rf
this works because find has a -newer switch that we're using.
From man find:
-newer file
File was modified more recently than file. If file is a symbolic
link and the -H option or the -L option is in effect, the modification time of the
file it points to is always used.
This other answer pollutes the file system and find itself offers a "delete" option. So, we don't have to pipe the results to xargs and then issue an rm.
This answer is more efficient:
find /path -type f -not -newermt "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MI:SS" -delete
find ~ -type f ! -atime 4|xargs ls -lrt
This will list files accessed older than 4 days, searching from home directory.
Related
I'm trying to work out a command which deletes sql files older than 15 days.
The find part is working but not the rm.
rm -f | find -L /usr/www2/bar/htdocs/foo/rsync/httpdocs/db_backups -type f \( -name '*.sql' \) -mtime +15
It kicks out a list of exactly the files I want deleted but is not deleting them. The paths are correct.
usage: rm [-f | -i] [-dIPRrvW] file ...
unlink file
/usr/www2/bar/htdocs/foo/rsync/httpdocs/db_backups/20120601.backup.sql
...
/usr/www2/bar/htdocs/foo/rsync/httpdocs/db_backups/20120610.backup.sql
What am I doing wrong?
You are actually piping rm's output to the input of find. What you want is to use the output of find as arguments to rm:
find -type f -name '*.sql' -mtime +15 | xargs rm
xargs is the command that "converts" its standard input into arguments of another program, or, as they more accurately put it on the man page,
build and execute command lines from standard input
Note that if file names can contain whitespace characters, you should correct for that:
find -type f -name '*.sql' -mtime +15 -print0 | xargs -0 rm
But actually, find has a shortcut for this: the -delete option:
find -type f -name '*.sql' -mtime +15 -delete
Please be aware of the following warnings in man find:
Warnings: Don't forget that the find command line is evaluated
as an expression, so putting -delete first will make find try to
delete everything below the starting points you specified. When
testing a find command line that you later intend to use with
-delete, you should explicitly specify -depth in order to avoid
later surprises. Because -delete implies -depth, you cannot
usefully use -prune and -delete together.
P.S. Note that piping directly to rm isn't an option, because rm doesn't expect filenames on standard input. What you are currently doing is piping them backwards.
find /usr/www/bar/htdocs -mtime +15 -exec rm {} \;
Will select files in /usr/www/bar/htdocs older than 15 days and remove them.
Another simpler method is to use locate command. Then, pipe the result to xargs.
For example,
locate file | xargs rm
Use xargs to pass arguments, with the option -rd '\n' to ignore spaces in names:
"${command}" | xargs -rd '\n' rm
Include --force if you want to also remove read only files.
Assuming you aren't in the directory containing the *.sql backup files:
find /usr/www2/bar/htdocs/foo/rsync/httpdocs/db_backups/*.sql -mtime +15 -exec rm -v {} \;
The -v option above is handy it will verbosely output which files are being deleted as they are removed.
I like to list the files that will be deleted first to be sure. E.g:
find /usr/www2/bar/htdocs/foo/rsync/httpdocs/db_backups/*.sql -mtime +15 -exec ls -lrth {} \;
I need to remove any file in the directory that is older than 2 years old. It is very important that I keep the newest files and delete the old files.
I have searched and found this.
find /path/to/files* -mtime +365 -exec rm {} \;
Can I just multiply the number?
find /path/to/files* -mtime +1095 -exec rm {} \;
Is there a way to add a switch that will print the file name to the screen as it removes it? To make sure it is doing what I am expecting?
I have also found this:
find /rec -mtime +365 -print0 | xargs -0 rm -f
Is there a major difference between the two? Is one better than the other? What I have read says that xargs is faster. Would I be able to multiply the mtime number out to a 2nd or 3rd year?
And finally would would I be able to place the code as it is into a cron job that can run daily?
Thank you!
Can I just multiply the number?
find /path/to/files -mtime +1095 -exec rm {} \;
Yes. And to "echo" before you remove
find /path/to/files -mtime +1095 -print
Then the version with -exec rm {} \; to remove the files (when you are ready).
find /path/to/files* -mtime +1095 -exec rm {} \;
That should work fine, you can run a dry a run of this by simply listing the files that are found by the command:
find /path/to/files* -mtime +1095 -exec ls {} \;
To be safe though I would also add in a -type to ensure that other things dont get deleted:
find /path/to/files* -type f -mtime +1095 -exec rm {} \;
To answer the second part of your question.
Yes there is a major difference in using -exec or xargs.
-exec starts a new process of rm for every file found. This creates a lot of overhead and can seriously slow down Systems if you delete a lot of files.
xargs creates only as much rm processes as needed, as it creates a command line containing as much files as possible. So only a few rm processes are created.
But both are better than -delete, because delete is unsave
We have linux machine we would like to check what new files have been added between a certain date range.
I only have SSH access to this box and it's openSUSE 11.1
Is there some sort of command that can give me a list of files that have been added to the filesystem between say 04/05/2011 and 05/05/2011
Thanks
Regards
Gabriel
There are bunch of ways for doing that.
First one:
start_date=201105040000
end_date=201105042359
touch -t ${start_date} start
touch -t ${end_date} end
find /you/path -type f -name '*you*pattern*' -newer start ! -newer end -exec ls -s {} \;
Second one:
find files modified between 20 and 21 days ago:
find -ctime +20 -ctime -21
finds files modified between 2500 and 2800 minutes ago:
find -cmin +2500 -cmin -2800
And read this topic too.
Well, you could use find to get a list of all the files that were last-modified in a certain time window, but that isn't quite what you want. I don't think you can tell just from a file's metadata when it came into existence.
Edit: To list the files along with their modification dates, you can pipe the output of find through xargs to run ls -l on all the files, which will show the modification time.
find /somepath -type f ... -print0 | xargs -0 -- ls -l
I misunderstood your question. Depending on what filesystem you are using, it may or may not store creation time.
My understanding is that ext2/3/4 do not store creation time, but modified, changed (status, which is slightly different), and access times are.
Fat32 on the other hand does contain creation timestamps IIRC.
If you are using an ext filesystem, you have two options it seems:
1.Settle for finding all of the files that were modified between two dates (which will include created files, but also files that were just edited). You could do this using find.
2.Create a script/cronjob that will document the contents of your filesystem at some interval, e.g.
find / > filesystem.$(date +%s).log
and then run diffs to see what has been added. This, of course, would prevent you from looking backwards to time before you started making these logs.
You can try one of these:
find -newerct "1 Aug 2013" ! -newerct "1 Sep 2013" -ls
find . -mtime $(date +%s -d"Jan 1, 2013 23:59:59") -mtime $(date +%s -d"Jan 2, 2016 23:59:59")
find /media/WD/backup/osool/olddata/ -newermt 20120101T1200 -not -newermt 20130101T1400
find . -mtime +1 -mtime -3
find . -mtime +1 -mtime -3 > files_from_yesterday.txt 2>&1
find . -mtime +1 -mtime -3 -ls > files_from_yesterday.txt 2>&1
touch -t 200506011200 first
touch -t 200507121200 last
find / -newer first ! -newer last
#!/bin/bash
for i in `find Your_Mail_Dir/ -newermt "2011-01-01" ! -newermt "2011-12-31"`; do
mv $i /moved_emails_dir/
Hope this helps.
I have a folder with a bunch of files. I need to delete all the files created before July 1st. How do I do that in a bash script?
I think the following should do what you want:
touch -t 201007010000 dummyfile
find /path/to/files -type f ! -newer dummyfile -delete
The first line creates a file which was last modified on the 1st July 2010. The second line finds all files in /path/to/file which has a date not newer than the dummyfile, and then deletes them.
If you want to double check it is working correctly, then drop the -delete argument and it should just list the files which would be deleted.
This should work:
find /file/path ! -newermt "Jul 01"
To find the files you want to delete, so the command to delete them would be:
find /file/path ! -newermt "Jul 01" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rm
How do I find all the files that were create only today and not in 24 hour period in unix/linux
On my Fedora 10 system, with findutils-4.4.0-1.fc10.i386:
find <path> -daystart -ctime 0 -print
The -daystart flag tells it to calculate from the start of today instead of from 24 hours ago.
Note however that this will actually list files created or modified in the last day. find has no options that look at the true creation date of the file.
find . -mtime -1 -type f -print
To find all files that are modified today only (since start of day only, i.e. 12 am), in current directory and its sub-directories:
touch -t `date +%m%d0000` /tmp/$$
find . -type f -newer /tmp/$$
rm /tmp/$$
Source
I use this with some frequency:
$ ls -altrh --time-style=+%D | grep $(date +%D)
After going through many posts I found the best one that really works
find $file_path -type f -name "*.txt" -mtime -1 -printf "%f\n"
This prints only the file name like
abc.txt not the /path/tofolder/abc.txt
Also also play around or customize with -mtime -1
This worked for me. Lists the files created on May 30 in the current directory.
ls -lt | grep 'May 30'
Use ls or find to have all the files that were created today.
Using ls : ls -ltr | grep "$(date '+%b %e')"
Using find : cd $YOUR_DIRECTORY; find . -ls 2>/dev/null| grep "$(date '+%b %e')"
find ./ -maxdepth 1 -type f -execdir basename '{}' ';' | grep `date +'%Y%m%d'`
You can use find and ls to accomplish with this:
find . -type f -exec ls -l {} \; | egrep "Aug 26";
It will find all files in this directory, display useful informations (-l) and filter the lines with some date you want... It may be a little bit slow, but still useful in some cases.
Just keep in mind there are 2 spaces between Aug and 26. Other wise your find command will not work.
find . -type f -exec ls -l {} \; | egrep "Aug 26";
If you're did something like accidentally rsync'd to the wrong directory, the above suggestions work to find new files, but for me, the easiest was connecting with an SFTP client like Transmit then ordering by date and deleting.
To get file before 24 hours execute below command:
find . -type f -mtime 1 -exec ls -l {} \;
To get files created today execute below command:
find . -type f -mtime -1 -exec ls -l {} \;
To Get files created before n days before, where +2 is before 2 days files in below command:
find . -type f -mtime +2 -exec ls -l {} \;