delete files older than 7 days Except on saturdays

rodnikosh · 03-17-2014, 09:20 AM

i use Linux Centos.
i use this command to delete files that are older than 7 days:

find * -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;

on saturdays, i make full backups of programs i have,
so i don't want to delete any file that was created on saturdays.

how do i combine such a task in the command?

schneidz · 03-17-2014, 09:39 AM

this worx for me:

Code:

[schneidz@hyper rodnikosh]$ ll
total 0
-rw-rw-r--. 1 schneidz schneidz 0 Mar 17 10:37 akuma
-rw-rw-r--. 1 schneidz schneidz 0 Mar 17 10:37 chun.li
-rw-rw-r--. 1 schneidz schneidz 0 Mar 17 10:37 h4x0rz.bak
-rw-rw-r--. 1 schneidz schneidz 0 Mar 17 10:37 hello
-rw-rw-r--. 1 schneidz schneidz 0 Mar 17 10:37 hello.bak
-rw-rw-r--. 1 schneidz schneidz 0 Mar 17 10:37 l33t.bak
-rw-rw-r--. 1 schneidz schneidz 0 Mar 17 10:37 world
[schneidz@hyper rodnikosh]$ find * -type f ! -name "*.bak" -exec echo rm {} \;
rm akuma
rm chun.li
rm hello
rm world

rodnikosh · 03-17-2014, 09:42 AM

ohh , thank you , but i must have misled you.
all the files are *.bak, the ones that are in normal days and the ones that are on saturdays.
so i can't identify them by name...

schneidz · 03-17-2014, 09:45 AM

Code:

[schneidz@hyper rodnikosh]$ date -d "last saturday"
Sat Mar 15 00:00:00 EDT 2014

rodnikosh · 03-17-2014, 09:47 AM

thanks guys , but i need to keep all previous saturdays, not just the last one...

schneidz · 03-17-2014, 10:02 AM

heres an idea:

Code:

[schneidz@hyper rodnikosh]$ touch -t 201403010000 rodnikosh
[schneidz@hyper rodnikosh]$ stat rodnikosh
  File: `rodnikosh'
  Size: 0         	Blocks: 0          IO Block: 4096   regular empty file
Device: fd00h/64768d	Inode: 1445575     Links: 1
Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--)  Uid: (  500/schneidz)   Gid: (  500/schneidz)
Context: unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0
Access: 2014-03-01 00:00:00.000000000 -0500
Modify: 2014-03-01 00:00:00.000000000 -0500
Change: 2014-03-17 11:03:06.556354133 -0400
 Birth: -
[schneidz@hyper rodnikosh]$ date -d "2014-03-01"
Sat Mar  1 00:00:00 EST 2014

edit: maybe you can run this in a loop:

Code:

[schneidz@hyper ~]$ date -d `stat rodnikosh | awk '/^Modify/ {print $2}'` "+%a"
Sat

michaelk · 03-17-2014, 10:36 AM

How are the backup files created?
How are the backup files named?
Are you just searching the current directory?

Some off the top ideas.
Append SAT to your backup file names and use the above posted find command that excludes SAT.
Create the Sat backup files in another directory. Limit the find command to not search that directory.
Loop through those files that are older then 7 days and check the atime/ctime. Delete those files not created on a Sat.

rodnikosh · 03-17-2014, 11:32 AM

Thank you all! that is a great idea.
i'll just backup the saturday backups into a different folder and operate the "rm" on the regular backups folder.
i just need to be carefull not to delete the script itself, since it is inside the folder of the backup and older than 7 day

Mark Nagel · 03-17-2014, 01:28 PM

If you wish to keep the script in the same directory you could regen it via cron script (if file doesn't exist then make it [source elsewhere]). I would prefer to have any executable in some other centralized location, but that's just my preference.

I'm a bit out of touch with Linux/Unix, so please excuse me for referencing any obsolete commands/programs and such...

chrism01 · 03-18-2014, 06:22 AM

Definitely keep the prog in a separate dir from data files eg backups.
Keeping the Sat backups in yet another dir eg 'weekly_archive' is also a good idea.

colucix · 03-18-2014, 08:18 AM

Another option using a tricky -exec action:

Code:

find . -mtime +7 ! -name script.sh -exec bash -c 'file="{}"; [[ $(date -r $file +%w) -ne 6 ]] && rm $file' \;

where script.sh is the name of the crontab script you want to protect from accidental removal.

griswald · 03-20-2014, 11:47 AM

If your system supports it, protect script.sh by making it immutable:

Code:

chattr +i script.sh

(To delete, first reverse the immutable bit with: chattr -i script.sh)