I have a bash script that needs to be run by cron. It works when the script only contains 1 command line, but fails when it's more than 1 line.
#!/bin/sh
find /path/to/file1 -name 'abc_*' -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;
find /path/to/file2 -name 'def*.gz' -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;
I received find: missing argument to `-exec' error message. I need to keep only the last 7 days of several different files in several different directories.
Why did I get that error message when all the commands have already seem to be true?
#user1576748
Is there anything that would prevent you from doing this inside one line?
example:
find /path/to/file1 /path/to/file2 -name 'abc*' -o -name 'def*.gz' -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;
The above works for me.
Related
I am using the following command to delete the files that are older than 10 days, but I also want to store(log) the list of files that are being deleted using the below command.
find ./path/delete -type f -name '*' -mtime +10 -exec rm {} \;
If you create a file to log to (touch ./path/to/logfile), just add another -exec to your command. Below is a very basic example, but you can add to it:
find ./path/delete -type f -name '*' -mtime +10 -exec rm {} \; -exec echo {} >> ./path/to/logfile \;
I got a script which deletes files which are older than 2 days, usually it works properly, but for some reason it doesn't work fine today.
I want to find an option to get an output from script with error why the files are not deleted.
Could you tell me is there such option?
script:
#!/bin/bash
#script for cleaning logs from files older than two days
dir_name=/home/albert/scripts/files
file_log=/home/albert/scripts/info.log
{
find ${dir_name} -type f -name '*.log' -mtime +2 -exec rm -v {} \;
} >> ${file_log)
You probably want to add a redirection for standard error too, i.e. in the case you want to send it to the same file:
{
find ${dir_name} -type f -name '*.log' -mtime +2 -exec rm -v {} \;
} >> ${file_log) 2>&1
You could use the find option -delete:
-delete - If the removal failed, an error message is issued.
find "${dir_name}" -type f -name '*.log' -mtime +2 -delete >> ${file_log} 2>&1
Example:
$ find /etc -name passwd -delete
find: cannot delete ‘/etc/pam.d/passwd’: Permission denied
find: cannot delete ‘/etc/passwd’: Permission denied
I am honestly nowhere near to be a decent bash scripter, but I made a little research and found a command that seems to be useful
find /path/to/files* -mtime +1 -exec rm {} \;
The question is if this line will remove directories? Because I want to only remove files that are images (actually in a *.jpeg format)
No, rm without the -r flag does not remove directories.
It looks like you want to add some more filters:
-type f to match only files
-name '*.jpeg' to match only files ending with .jpeg
Lastly, instead of -exec rm {} \;, you could use the much simpler -delete.
Putting it together, this looks more appropriate for you:
find /path/to/files* -mtime +1 -type f -name '*.jpeg' -delete
Then narrow your search results to *.jpeg files:
find /path/to/files* -mtime +1 -type f -name "*.jpeg" -exec rm {} \;
It's always better to remove the exec parameter to do a dry run before delete:
find /path/to/files* -mtime +1 -type f -name "*.jpeg"
Each line will be passed to rm command, and nothing more.
I am able to delete lets say all regular files in a folder older than 7 days via:
find /path/to/dir -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;
with a single problem. There is a file here (.gitignore) which I want to keep. I tried using regex but apparently findutils regex does not have support for negative lookahead (?!gitignore)
Any other ideas?
Use ! -name .gitignore
find /path/to/dir ! -name .gitignore -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;
You can group multiple arguments within escaped parentheses. Example, to remove all files except .gitignore and javascript files (ending in .js):
find /path/to/dir ! \( -name ".gitignore" -o -name "*.js" \) -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;
-o means or
Is there a way to write the file names to a file before they are deleted for reference later to check what has been deleted.
find <PATH> -type f -name "<filePattern>" -mtime +1 -delete
Just add a -print expression to the invocation of find:
find <PATH> -type f -name "<filePattern>" -mtime +1 -delete -print > log
I'm not sure if this prints the name before or after the file is unlinked, but it should not matter. I suspect -delete -print unlinks before it prints, while -print -delete will print before it unlinks.
Like William said, you can use -print. However, instead of -print > log, you can also use the -fprint flag.
You'd want something like:
find <PATH> -type f -name "<filePattern>" -mtime +1 -fprint "<pathToLog>" -delete
For instance, I use this in a script:
find . -type d -name .~tmp~ -fprint /var/log/rsync-index-removal.log -delete
You can use -exec and rm -v:
find <PATH> -type f -name "<filePattern>" -mtime +1 -exec rm -v {} \;
rm -v will report what it is deleting.
With something like this you can execute multiple commands in the exec statement, like log to file, rm file, and whatever more you should need
find <PATH> -type f -name "<filePattern>" -mtime +1 -exec sh -c "echo {} >>mylog; rm -f {}" \;
From a shell script named removelogs.sh
run the command sh removelogs.sh in terminal
this is the text in removelogs.sh file.
cd /var/log;
date >> /var/log/removedlogs.txt;
find . -maxdepth 4 -type f -name \*log.old -delete -print >> /var/log/removedlogs.txt
. - to run at this location !!! so ensure you do not run this in root folder!!!
-maxdepth - to prevent it getting out of control
-type - to ensure just files
-name - to ensure just your filtered names
-print - to send the result to stdout
-delete - to delete said files
>> - appends to files not overwrites > creates new file
works for me on CENTOS7