Command to delete half of files in directory.

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hello Friends,

I have directory called /tmp. which stores the log files.
Whenever it becomes full, i want to delete half of files from all log files.
even after deleting the files, if space is more than 90% then it should delete rest of half files.
While deleting files, older files should be deleted first.
Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

2

And where is the issue?

We see no attempts from you to write the script...

3

I am unable to find the logic to divide the files into half part. and delete the older files first. As i am not sure how much files are there in tmp directory, I am bit confused.

4

Why don't you try using find command to delete files of particular days/weeks old .. like all files older then 7 ...

then use unix "du / df " commands to checks if its usage = 90% .. if so delete all files else no nothing :wall:

If you provide a sample directory/number of files .. we would help you better :smiley:

5

Hello Nakul,

Here is the hint for you.

1- you can check the number of files by ls command with using wc command or by awk command.

2- you can then look for the man page for find command which have all the severa; options to search files older than specific number of days.

3- You can use exec command to delete those files within find command itself.

Could you please try the steps and let us know where you have stuck.

Thanks,
R. Singh

6

Thanks for reply.
Yes i can find out count of files by using

ls -lrt |wc -l

suppose it is 120
How can i delete the first 60 files then.?
File name is like

Server_stat_log.2013-11-10

Will that format is helpfull to develop the logic.?

Experts Please help

7

find /your_directory -mtime +7 -exec rm -f {} \;

should help you to delete files.. you can simply use "cron" to execute the above command on particular day.

Plzzz How does the number of files matter in deletion :confused::eek:??

i suggest going by age of file would help you more ..

8

Try

ls -t1 >temp;split -nl/2 temp del;while read FN; do echo rm "$FN"; done <delab; rm temp dela?

and remove the echo when you're happy with the proposed deletions. Using xargs might reduce the number of rm calls but will not handle file names with spaces.