delete files when it's older 30 days

Madison00 · 01-06-2011, 01:59 PM

I am trying to put together ksh shell and I am new with writing scripts.

How do you write a command to delete any files if it's 30 days old and also it's not currently being locked?

Thanks so much.

acid_kewpie · 01-06-2011, 02:02 PM

if you use the find command with the "-mtime +30" you'll get files modified more than 30 days ago. as for being locked... what does locked mean? Currently open? I'd take each file from the find output and use lsof (or fuser) to see if anything has it open within a loop.

Madison00 · 01-06-2011, 03:47 PM

below is my script:

#!/bin/ksh
#
ORA_HOME=$ORACLE_HOME
ORA_LOGS=$ORA_HOME/Apache/Apache/logs

#delete log files older than 1 days
find $ORA_LOGS -type f -mtime +180 rm {} \;

below is the error when I run the script:

$ ./cleanup_log.ksh
find: paths must precede expression
Usage: find [path...] [expression]

thanks

crts · 01-06-2011, 03:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Madison00

below is my script:

#!/bin/ksh
#
ORA_HOME=$ORACLE_HOME
ORA_LOGS=$ORA_HOME/Apache/Apache/logs

#delete log files older than 1 days
find $ORA_LOGS -type f -mtime +180 rm {} \;

below is the error when I run the script:

$ ./cleanup_log.ksh
find: paths must precede expression
Usage: find [path...] [expression]

thanks

Try it this way:
find $ORA_LOGS -type f -mtime +180 -exec echo rm {} \;

If the output are the files you want to delete then remove the echo. When using 'find' it is a good practice to echo dangerous commands like 'rm' before you actually run them.

colucix · 01-06-2011, 03:54 PM

You missed the -exec option. You can either do

Code:

find $ORA_LOGS -type f -mtime +180 -exec echo rm {} \;

where the echo is for testing purposes, or

Code:

find $ORA_LOGS -type f -mtime +180 -delete

Regarding the locked files issue, I would consider the suggestion by acid_kewpie.

acid_kewpie · 01-06-2011, 04:06 PM

I personally prefer using xargs instead of -exec:

find $ORA_LOGS -type f -mtime +180 | xargs rm -f

might want -print0 output if your filenames are non standard.

Madison00 · 01-06-2011, 04:20 PM

thanks for all of the good tips and advises. Certainly helped since I still learn scripting.

one more thing.

how can I add another check condition to be sure these files are not being opened before remove them? In other word, I don't want to remove the files that are current used by the application.

Thanks all.

Madison00 · 01-06-2011, 09:57 PM

any recommendations?

acid_kewpie · 01-07-2011, 02:07 AM

we've already answered that, lsof.