script to delete contents in a directory by date

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi ,

I am trying to make a cron job to delete the contents of a directory [basically log files] in a linux environment.The contents created before 2 days should get deleted by this job.Here is what i have written :

/usr/bin/find / -name *.log -ctime +2 -exec /bin/rm -f {} \;

Is it correct....If not so,please tell me the ammendments.

Thx in advance.

2

Two small things....firstly "ctime" is not the "create" time but the "change" time - probably best to read the man page to make sure you understand the difference between mtime and ctime. Secondly you will probably need to escape or quote the wildcard, eg:

/usr/bin/find / -name "*.log" -ctime +2 -exec /bin/rm -f {} \;

Cheers...

3

Thanks citaylor......:slight_smile:

4

Hi,

I am using this script to delete the files created 5 days ago in /home/directory/ location.
But somehow its not working.Can you please let me know the error in this.

find /home/directory/ -type f -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;

Thanks

5

on a system with GNU touch and find I use

touch -d "-5 days" /tmp/5daysago
find /home/dir/ -type f ! -newer /tmp/5daysago -exec rm {} \;
6

on a system with GNU touch and find I use

touch -d "-5 days" /tmp/5daysago
find /home/dir/ -type f ! -newer /tmp/5daysago -exec rm {} \;
7

What happens? Please post any error messages.
Are you user "root"? If not, do you own all the files?

8

Script is executing without any error or notification but files are not getting deleted.
Also i am logging as a root user..please help..

9

What do you get it you try to just list the files:

find /home/directory/ -type f -mtime +5 -exec ls -lad {} \;

And (if there are links involved).

find /home/directory/ -follow -type f -mtime +5 -exec ls -lad {} \;
10

Thanks citaylor for your help....I am able to create the required script..