Script that will auto erase specified files in users directory

ocavid · 08-09-2007, 06:31 PM

hi there,

has anyone has a script that will automatically erase files saved in the users directory?

for example,

We have a samba domain and file server and all users files are in this server, they are only allowed to save document related files, no executable, mp3 and other unnecessary files.

any help or guide is appreciated.

thank you,
ocavid

win32sux · 08-09-2007, 07:21 PM

You mean like you want a script you can run from cron which deletes any files that aren't (for example) .doc and .xls (whitelist)? Or do you need it to delete files of certain kind (blacklist)?

ocavid · 08-09-2007, 07:49 PM

Yes, script that can run on cron is fine, that can just leave files allowed.

blacklisting is very good i guess but that might be very difficult.

thank you,
ocavid

slakmagik · 08-09-2007, 08:19 PM

Code:

find /users \
  ! -iregex '.*odt' \
  ! -iregex '.*txt' \
  ... \
  -exec rm {} \;

(or '| xargs rm')

might work. Just reverse the logic and the extensions for removing disallowed files rather than sparing allowed files.

However, you might want to work something up with 'file' since your users can just change the extensions of the files if they want this way.

Not sure if there are effects I'm not thinking of here, so these suggestions comes without warranty.

win32sux · 08-09-2007, 10:20 PM

Yeah, here's an approach I came-up with based on the file command:

Code:

#!/bin/sh

if file $1 | egrep "PDF|Microsoft" > /dev/null ; then
  exit ; else
  rm -f $1
fi

Let's say you name it auto-delete.sh and place it in root's home folder. To have the script run every night at 10:30PM you could call this script from root's crontab like:

Code:

30 22 * * * find /home/example -type f -exec /root/auto-delete.sh {} \; > /dev/null 2>&1

Where /home/example is the directory you wanna check (recursively). The script as posted would delete any files that aren't either PDF or Microsoft (I tested it with Excel and Word files). You can easily add matches for other file types. A couple things you might wanna consider are moving the files instead of deleting them (as a safeguard) and having the script generate a log of what it does (and perhaps have it email it to you).

EDIT: Here's an example with logging:

Code:

#!/bin/sh

if file $1 | egrep "PDF|Microsoft" > /dev/null ; then
  echo `date` $1 IGNORED >> /var/log/auto-delete.log ; exit ; else
  echo `date` $1 REMOVED >> /var/log/auto-delete.log ; rm -f $1
fi

I just noticed, however, that my approach has issues when it comes to files with spaces in their names. =(

ocavid · 08-10-2007, 01:07 AM

Thank you!

this is great, this a good start.

Have a great day!