Hello, I'm running FC6 on a dual core 2.8GHz pentium-D machine with 3.5GB RAM. I have about 8GB free on a 250GB hard disk, with one folder taking up about 130GB (almost entirely text data files). To free up some space, I want to compress this folder and get rid of the original files. But since the zip file will likely be larger than the 8GB free space in the hard disk, I can't simply zip it and then remove the original files. Is there a command to compress and remove original files at the same time on the fly? Or should I need to write a shell script that takes one file at a time, adds to an archive and deletes the original (I'm guessing this would take forever...)?

Thanks in advance.

Why not just gzip the individual files one at a time:

cd <dir>
for file in *
do gzip $file
done

This will copy each "file" into a gzipped "file.gz" then remove the "file".

You really wouldn't want to delete the original file until the gzip compressed file is complete. What happens if the compression doesn't work (because you ran out of space for example)? You'd lose both the original and the in progress gz file. By doing the above it takes care of the deletion of the original file once the gz file has been created.

This is definitely a most interesting solution that I have not thought of. Thank you very much.

I think it's easier and safer to have lots of excess space----buy a a big external USB drive if you have to (storage is cheap: http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCateg...al-Hard-Drives ) Create your .tar.gz archive, check it, make a backup, and then delete the original stuff.