shell script to remove old files based on date
 

I have a cron job which tars/compresses various files on a daily basis. So that I don't eventually run out of space, what I need to do now is write a shell script to remove files in a specified directory which are older than, say, 60 days. Does anyone have a simple way to do this? Or, can someone point me in the right direction?

Look at the manpage for the "find" command. Here is an example of what you want.

find /var/log -mtime +60 -type f -exec rm -rf {} \;

This command will do a search in /var/log for all files that were last modified 60 or more days ago and executes a recursive forced (-rf) remove (rm). The "{}" (curly braces) is the place holder for exec to use where it will put the name of the file, and the "\;" tells exec that's the end of the statement. Find is very powerful, and I suggest you do some reading BEFORE you do any removing using "find". Also, as a test you can replace the "rm -rf" with "ls -la" to get a list of all the files that would be removed. And, if you want to remove files with specific names or extensions use the "-name" argument.

d3funct:

Thanks for the input and for the caveats. This looks like exactly what I was looking for. Really clever signature, by the way.

I have a similar issue. I need to schedule a job, but can't figure out the syntax. I want a job to run daily at 12:00 a.m. The job will delete all files in a certain directory that were created prior to 12:00 a.m.


What is the syntax to accomplish this task? I use a Bourne shell.


Thank you.

Dear d3funct, i really want to thank you for the great and simple way to deal with the files according to their modification date.

@WindozBytes: have you looked into logrotate, it does exactly that sort of thing.
Its part of the std install in linux, look in /etc for logrotate.conf, logrotate.d & man logrotate.

Date created -vs- modified date.
 

I've got the very same script running in a cron job, but since nothing is 'modifying' the log files, they don't get deleted. I've tried using -ctime but having the same results. Is there a switch or some kind of command that will sort (delete) based on raw age of the file?

Thanks,
Jake

Hello dragon49 :)Are you asking about the scheduling (see the crontab man page and ask again if that doesn't tell you what you need to know) or about deleting the files? If the script runs at 12 AM and you want to delete all files created before that time then rm /my_directory/* will do the job (unless you have "hidden" files starting with a ".").

Best

Charles

hi,

how to get to know the oldest file in the perticulat dir?

Hello Chandan :)

Better start your own thread, especially as your question is not related to the subject of this thread.

EDIT: sorry, it is kind of related, but still better to start your own thread asking your specific question.

oldest file in dir
 

Hello Chandan

ls -t1 pathname | head -1

------------
create a crontab file using "crontab -e" & and "crontab -l" to list it.
place the line -
*/59 */11 * * * /script_path arg1 arg2. as required.

Ahh!!!! Multiple resurrections! Zombie thread! Run for the hills!