alternative command for "find -mtime "

sspisharody · 02-13-2009, 10:24 AM

I assumed that I'd find a post similar to this one already... but have had no luck finding any.

So I am trying to run a backup/cleanup job and need to delete files that are older than 30 days. Here is what I use:

find <path> -mtime +30 -exec rm -f {} \

I have a highly split up directory tree structure, with more than 25K folders to delete daily, and the find command in itself seems like it takes forever to run.

Any ideas on how I could make this more efficient?

openSauce · 02-13-2009, 04:17 PM

You could try replacing the \ with a + at the end of your find command. Then instead of starting a new rm process for each file, rm is called just once with a list of all the found files.

OTOH if you've got 25K+ files that's probably too many for a single command line, and I've got a feeling that to increase that limit you need to recompile the kernel. But you could give it a go, and if it complains there are too many arguments, you split the find command up by executing it on the subdirs of the path you're using at the mo.

syg00 · 02-13-2009, 04:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sspisharody

I have a highly split up directory tree structure, with more than 25K folders to delete daily, and the find command in itself seems like it takes forever to run.

Does this imply you are traversing 30 x 25k (plus) every day ?. If so I'm not surprised it takes a while.
I'd be inclined to look at redesigning things, and maybe have each day under a different directory - that way you could just prune the oldest (after 30 days) directory. No search necessary.