Hi Guys,

I wanted shell script to delete 30 days oldest folder from a path /jenkins/build/ and in it there are 4 folders with names as(1,2,3,4) and also there some other old folders too but i have to write a condition were it will check this 1,2,3,4 and will delete the oldest of this 4 folders only without touching any other old folders.

Can you guys help me on this

I think you want find, and a for loop. look up the man page on find.

A note of advice. The folks on this forum value when people make sincere attempts to figure it out on their own without instantly asking for the how to. Once you get something going, post it and they will help debug and offer suggestions. They generally will not write your scripts for you, unless of course it is a convoluted thing and they just love the challenge of it.

I have prepared the below command which will delete a directory 30 day old.

Now problem is this will delete all the things in the path /jenkins/build/job which are 30 days old and I want condition to put here like.

In this path /jenkins/build/job there are 1,2,3,4 directory i have to delete 30 days old from it and also retain a copy of it too, if all of the folders (1,2,3,4) are like 30 days old then as per there modification time delete 2 of them and maintain a copy.

I am not good at scripting please help me on this issue with your ideas.

find /jenkins/build/job -type d -name 1 -mtime +30 -exec rm -rf {} \;

Example of the issue

[root@prathamfrontend job]# pwd
/jenkins/build/job
[root@prathamfrontend job]# ls -ltr
total 20
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 3 06:38 setup
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 3 06:38 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 3 06:38 3
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 3 06:38 2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 4 03:58 1
[root@prathamfrontend job]#


Just did a -1 to check if its deleting all folders

[root@prathamfrontend job]# find /jenkins/build/job -type d -mtime -1 -exec rm -rf {} \;
find: `/jenkins/build/job': No such file or directory
[root@prathamfrontend job]# ll
total 0
[root@prathamfrontend job]#


Thanks,
Prathamesh

Several things, read the manual page for rm.
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Even then there are still a lot of things that can go wrong with file names. So I'd recommend using the -delete option where available.

However, I'd use -print first to make sure you are selecting what you want.

Thanks For the reply Turbocapitalist, main issue is that there are many files on this location and i have to only delete folder 1,2,3,4 which are 30 days oldest and keep a copy from it.

This much is correct find /jenkins/build/job -type d -mtime +30 -delete

But how to put this conditions ?

[root@localhost job]# pwd
/jenkins/build/jo
[root@localhost job]# ls -ltr
total 44
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 4 14:33 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 4 14:33 3
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 4 14:33 2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 4 14:33 1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 4 14:34 file2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 4 14:34 file1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 4 14:34 conf
[root@localhost job]#


find /jenkins/build/job -type d -name 1 -mtime +30 -delete

Again, have you read the man page on the find command??? And can you post what YOU have done/tried/written on your own to solve your problem? We're happy to help you, but you have to show effort of your own first. You've been here several years now; you've read the "Question Guidelines" right?

@Turbocapitalist,
find ... -exec rm -rf {} \; is safe regarding special filenames, and quotes are not needed. There is no shell in between, and filenames are prefixed with a path.
However, the recursive rm is a problem because it happily deletes the whole tree. Generally, because find is recursive, you should not have another recursive command in it.
--
A find ... -delete does partial deletes; where I understand the o/p wants all or nothing.
Maybe the solution here is to find the young files first, and if none was found do the rm -rf

3 members found this post helpful.

Thanks. My misunderstanding on the presence of a shell. I was thinking too much about shell variables.

It looks like you're right on that:

The page you linked to https://www.dwheeler.com/essays/filenames-in-shell.html also doesn't give examples which make assume find in general wouldn't be able to handle such problems. The wrong usage of find is which does it, and those examples are given there.

It's not intended as a tutorial. It's there to point out the existing pitfalls and to call for changes in implementation.

didn't i say that?
None of the pitfalls there cover the usage of find here, the one you pointed out to contain problems.

HI jmgibson1981 i have gone through all the find pages and could make some of this commands but they are not helping much

find /home/vk/* -type d -exec stat --format '%Y :%y %n' "{}" \; | sort -n | awk '{print $5}' | head -1 | xargs rm -rf

if you have a restriction on filenames (or dirnames) you need to check the -name option of find. Also you may need either the -or or -and operator.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank Pan64

I need something like this were i will search all folders (1,2,3,4) and will delete the folder which is 30 days old.
But if all of the four are 30 days old then latest among them, this my condition

Guys could you add your views and let me know

find . -type d -mtime +30 -name "1" -o -name "2" -o -name "3" -o -name "4"

this cannot be done with a single find command, you need to combine it with the commands in post #12