script for removing 30day old files but keeping *.zip

timnewton · 10-13-2008, 03:13 AM

Hi there,

i have just signed up because i have started a new job and we now use red hat servers which i dont have much linux experience.

here is my problem :-

we have a set of folders which are used by a few companies for Ftp. we want to delete everything which is 30 days old or older (i have found that code) but there are 3 .zip files in each folder which will always be older than 30days that we want to keep.

here is the code i have be hacking around

find /Raid/ftp -type f rm -r -mtime +30 -exec rm '{}' \;

so what is the best way to do this? the only thing i can think of is to remove all 30day files and then copy the zip files back everytime. but i feel it is a messy solution.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance

Regards

Tim Newton

arungoodboy · 10-13-2008, 03:22 AM

How about piping the results of the find command, removing all entries with .zip in the file, and then deleting the remaining files mentioned in the temp file? You could add the whole thing into a shell script and run that instead.
Something like this:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
find /Raid/ftp -type f -mtime +30 -print > /tmp/tempfile   #tempfile has a list of all files older than 30 days
sed -i 's/zip/d' /tmp/tempfile    #all zip files are removed from tempfile now
rm `cat /tmp/tempfile`          #the remaining files are deleted

You might want to test that code a couple times before you run it.

druuna · 10-13-2008, 03:34 AM

Hi,

find can do this all at once. Example:

find /Raid/ftp -type f \! -iname "*zip" -mtime +30

The blue part tells find not (\!, -not can also be used) to include zip (any case, end of the string) files.

Hope this helps.

PS: Here are some find related links:

examples of using UNIX find
real world FIND usage

arungoodboy · 10-13-2008, 03:40 AM

Hey, that's an awesome tip!

timnewton · 10-13-2008, 04:06 AM

wow thanks for the quick response

i have tried find /Raid/ftp -type f \! -iname "*zip" -mtime +30

but it's not deleting the files do i to use a -r somewhere?

but thanks so much for the help, i have to admit i really like how the linux server works i might be a full convert soon

druuna · 10-13-2008, 06:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by timnewton

wow thanks for the quick response

i have tried find /Raid/ftp -type f \! -iname "*zip" -mtime +30

but it's not deleting the files do i to use a -r somewhere?

That's because I did not include the -exec rm -f {} \; part, it's always a good idea to see what your find statement comes up with before you start deleting stuff (especially when you are new at this).

Add the 'missing' part to the end of my original statement (after checking you are getting the wanted results).

gg-jgs · 10-13-2008, 10:36 AM

good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

timnewton · 10-14-2008, 03:50 AM

WOW thanks so much,

Sorry i was late to reply i just got swamped with work,

Thanks very much for your help all of you