How to create a cron job to delete a folder's contents?

s0n|k · 10-05-2007, 08:38 AM

I need a way to erase the contents of a folder every so often.. Say, every 10 minutes. I would imagine that cron could help me do this, but I'm not sure how to go about writing a script that will accomplish this (similar to a bat file in Windows). Can someone give me a hand? I'm using RHEL4

colucix · 10-05-2007, 08:59 AM

You will find most details on how to setup a cron job in

Code:

man 5 crontab

Briefly, you have to edit the crontab and add the time specification and the command to execute. First task

Code:

crontab -e

second add something like this

Code:

*/10 * * * * test -d /path/to/dir_to_clean && rm -rf /path/to/dir_to_clean/*

this will run the command line every 10 minutes of each hour and each day of the year, removing the content of dir_to_clean (if it exists). Please, when you are going to test an harmful command (indeed rm -rf is) double or triple check what you are typing. The risk is to delete something like your home dir or the whole system (if logged as root)