This question already has answers here:
Shell script to delete directories older than n days
(5 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
my backups are stored in folders. e.g
**05092013** >
- File1.sql
- File2.sql
- File1.tar
- File2.tar
and so on.
Now I want to delete all Folders that are older than X Days.
I tried this
find $FILEDIR -mtime +14 -exec rm {} \;
but it only deletes all files and not the folders. how can i delete all files and folders that are older?
can someone help me?
Thx in advance cSGermany
Use -r?
find "$FILEDIR" -mtime +14 -exec rm -ir {} \;
Change -ir to just -r if you know what you're doing.
Or use -delete:
find "$FILEDIR" -mtime +14 -delete
But please, please make sure you know what you're doing.
You could add checks like this too to make sure $FILEDIR is always somewhere in your home directory:
[[ $FILEDIR == /home/abc/* ]] && find "$FILEDIR" -mtime +14 -delete
to find only directory, you could add find $FILEDIR -type d ... it could avoid to remove files (e.g. files under your given root dir) by mistake.
to remove a non-empty directory, you need rm -r, so -r option is important here.
Related
I have a directory named repository which has a number of files and sub directories. I want to find the files and directories which have not been modified since last 14 days so that I can delete those files and directories.
I have wrote this script but it is giving the directory name only
#!/bin/sh
M2_REPO=/var/lib/jenkins/.m2/repository
echo $M2_REPO
OLDFILES=/var/lib/jenkins/.m2/repository/deleted_artifacts.txt
AGE=14
find "${M2_REPO}" -name '*' -atime +${AGE} -exec dirname {} \; >> ${OLDFILES}
find /path/to/files* -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;
Note that there are spaces between rm, {}, and \;
Explanation
The first argument is the path to the files. This can be a path, a directory, or a wildcard as in the example above. I would recommend using the full path, and make sure that you run the command without the exec rm to make sure you are getting the right results.
The second argument, -mtime, is used to specify the number of days old that the file is. If you enter +5, it will find files older than 5 days.
The third argument, -exec, allows you to pass in a command such as rm. The {} \; at the end is required to end the command.
This should work on Ubuntu, Suse, Redhat, or pretty much any version of linux.
You can give the find -delete flag to remove the files with it. Just be careful to put it in the end of the command so that the time filter is applied first.
You can first just list the files that the command finds:
find "${M2_REPO}" -depth -mtime +${AGE} -print
The -d flag makes the find do the search depth-first, which is implied by the -deletecommand.
If you like the results, change the print to delete:
find "${M2_REPO}" -mtime +${AGE} -delete
I know this is a very old question but FWIW I solved the problem in two steps, first find and delete files older than N days, then find and delete empty directories. I tried doing both in one step but the delete operation updates the modification time on the file's parent directory, and then the (empty) directory does not match the -mtime criteria any more! Here's the solution with shell variables:
age=14
dir="/tmp/dirty"
find "$dir" -mtime "+$age" -delete && find "$dir" -type d -empty -delete
This question already has answers here:
find files older than X days in bash and delete
(3 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I have a server which creates several log files in the log directory. Due to this logging mechanism it eats up a lot of disk space on my server. I want to write a script that deletes all the files that are older than one day and keep the latest ones.
I am able to list the directories in sorted form using ls -trl command. But I am not able to understand how to remove these files. Please help.
You can use the following command:
/usr/bin/find <Your Log Directory> -mtime +1 | xargs rm -f
mtime - provides the file modification time.
+1 - indicates greater than one day.
Try using rm and find command like:
find . -mmin +$((60*24)) -exec rm {} \;
You don't want ls, you want find.
It has a neat argument, -mtime, that limits the results to a specific time delta, and -exec which allows you to provide a command to run on the results.
So for example,
find -mtime +10 -name "*tmp*" -exec rm {} \;
Does an rm on all files older than 10 days, with tmp in the name.
Oh, and be careful.
Very careful.
find . -mtime +1 -exec rm {} \;
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
I want to create a script that will delete any files older than 7 days on a specified list of directories, but wondering what would be the best way to go about it...
I want to perform the following command on all directories specified:
find DIRECTORY_PATH -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;
Maybe an array holding a list of directories, and loop through each element in the array performing the find command on that?
Any help/advice would be appreciated.
You can directly store all the directories in a file, say dirs.txt and loop through it:
while read dir
do
find "$dir" -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;
done < dirs.txt
I've got a log file directory that has 82000 files and directories in it (about half and half).
I need to delete all the file and directories which are older than 3 days.
In a directory that has 37000 files in it, I was able to do this with:
find * -mtime +3 -exec rm {} \;
But with 82000 files/directories, I get the error:
/usr/bin/find: Argument list too long
How can I get around this error so that I can delete all files/directories that are older than 3 days?
To delete all files and directories within the current directory:
find . -mtime +3 | xargs rm -Rf
Or alternatively, more in line with the OP's original command:
find . -mtime +3 -exec rm -Rf -- {} \;
Can also use:
find . -mindepth 1 -mtime +3 -delete
To not delete target directory
Another solution for the original question, esp. useful if you want to remove only SOME of the older files in a folder, would be smth like this:
find . -name "*.sess" -mtime +100
and so on.. Quotes block shell wildcards, thus allowing you to "find" millions of files :)