[SOLVED] Scriting BASH delete old file with ctime.
 

Hi all, I'm actually having an issue with a script I have to make. I first try commands before making the script and even with commands it doesn't work.

By the way sorry for my english, I'm french.

I have to delete on a ReadyNAS Pro directories that are older than X days. I've checked and "mtime" seems to be the best way to found them.

Easy way... However, whatever I try it doesn't work.
First I had issues with the spaces in the name. When I tried to resolve it, I have an error in find must precede expression...
I tried aproximately 15 differents syntaxes that i found on the web, but none worked as I wanted.

Here is my current command:

In my final script I will replace full paths with variable.

What is wrong with that command?
I've been working on that since 3 days without succeding in anything..

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I didn't check on the forum if someone else had this issue because after all my search on web I really don't know where came from my probleme.

should do the trick nicely.

if it works please let me know and mark post as [SOLVED]

edited to change to the correct number of days and to add the proper -rf flag to command.

...and if you've got a "modern" version of 'find' then this should work too:

Just a quick note: the -delete action removes only empty directories. If the output includes all the files inside the directory they will be removed first, since -delete implies -depth and the directory will result empty before deletion. However, here we have -type d and the content of the directory (if any) is left untouched.

Crap, you're right! Thanks for correcting me.

Won't you want "rm -r" ?

Hi all, thanks to you for your responses.
I won't be able to tets your answers until thursday cauz' i'm working in a remote site for 2 days.

Effectively a "rm -r" should match better.

In fact, i'm using cobian backup for saving a dataserver's repertories. It means my repertories are full of repertories and files and repertories... Moreover the names of my repertories are like: "MYFOLDERTOSAVE 2012-02-28 10h50 (Incremental)" which is very boring. I can't change that automated naming so I've to work thinking of these spaces (maybe blank characters, don't know the word).

I want to delete old files cauz' the NAS is limited up to 1To that represent about a month of saves.

Maybe i should have started with that explanation first before giving you a script built with parts of many other scripts in many website...

yes you would need the -r for removing the directories... my bad, i typically will use rm -rf when i remove things. sorry tossed that up rather fast this morning.

Hi all,

back to work and I wanted to try but I've just one more question.

"-maxdepth n" isn't it for searching only to n directory from where the commands start? Because I have many subfolders.
May I try "-mindepth n" instead or am I misunderstanding the command?

Whatever your answer could be, i try your command on my test nas and let you know result. :)

ok... I tried lol

So what happened:

find: /c/home/test/D/: No such file or directory

so I tried without the last "/" after "D" like this:

Then my repertory D simply disapear with all its content ^^

Using -ok instead of -exec is sometimes a good idea; or even run with -print before using another command to see what it expects to work on.

Yah I know it but as I'm not a pro in bahs commands lines i didn't want to complicate my task. I never used those parameters and even don't know about -ok.

Whatever it's not a real problem, it's a NAS i used for testing no any ral data have been deleted. It's jsut I'll have to wait few more days for the repertory to get new files and folders.

This is mine
Working for a few months (almost 1yr :P)

find /home/fileserver/backups/Setorial/Diario -type f -mtime +5 >> /home/fileserver/backups/logs/Removidos/Removidos-$INICIO.log
find /home/fileserver/backups/Setorial/Diario -type f -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;

So this morning I check again what "-xtime" to use.
In fact, "-ctime" is the appropriate parameter for my script.

What I type:
And it work very fine. Thanks the all of you for helping. Just have to write down and comment my script.