Deleting a large number of files

msteudel · 01-25-2005, 04:05 PM

I have a folder that is about 12 gb and is comprised of small files from under a k to 10 k. Everytime I do a rm -f <dir>/* my connection get's booted or if I do a rm -f <dir>/* & I see segmentation fault. My guess it's too many files or something for rm to work with. I was wonder if there was another way I could go about deleting the files.

Thanks, Mark

Blinker_Fluid · 01-25-2005, 04:13 PM

so do you need to keep the folder around? If you don't you could always do a 'rm -rf folder_name'

What about going into the directory and deleting a smaller selection with wildcards? like
'rm a*'

msteudel · 01-25-2005, 04:19 PM

Not sure why I didn't try just deleting the folder and recreate it.

Thanks for the idea on the wild cards, I have a little script now doing a series of smaller subsections ...

thanks for the ideas.

Dark_Helmet · 01-25-2005, 04:21 PM

The find command is also handy:

Code:

find <dir> -type f -exec rm {} \;

That'll delete all the files in <dir> and all subdirectories. The directory structure will be preserved.

realjustin · 01-26-2005, 02:36 AM

This is a known problem, it can also be gotten around by using something like xargs. I agree with the whole directory thing though.