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Old 10-05-2007, 07:38 AM   #1
s0n|k
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Registered: Feb 2006
Distribution: RHEL4
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How to create a cron job to delete a folder's contents?


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
 
Old 10-05-2007, 07:59 AM   #2
colucix
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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)

Last edited by colucix; 10-05-2007 at 08:00 AM.
 
  


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