Need a little help with some find and delete

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10-28-2010
bsoth

Need a little help with some find and delete

Hey- so we have this fax server that is running a linux kernel and not an actual dist. from what I understand. Here is my problem:

I need to be able to script something to log into the box, run a find similar to the following:
find . -type d -name "0*" -mtime +5 |wc -l

this will list the files that are more than 5 days old? Is this right? If so, great. Now I would like to delete them:

being the newb I am, I figured I would try this one:

rm -rf `find . -type d -name "0*" -mtime +5

?
I have leanrted how to find and delete using:
ls -l |grep "^d.*Sep 13" |xargs rm -rf to delete every file from Sep 13. Works ok I guess.

What I want to really do is set this up in chrontab to delete the specific files that are older than 5 days and run this script every 5 days.

There is also something called busybox that is also giving me problems- no idea what that is.

# rm -rf find . -type d -name "0*" -mtime +5
rm: invalid option -- t
BusyBox v1.00 (2010.06.21-20:43+0000) multi-call binary

Usage: rm [OPTION]... FILE...

# rm -rf `find . -type d -name "0*" -mtime +5
>
but I get the > prompt. What does this mean? how do I deal with it?

If anyone can just help me that we would be great!

thanks
b
10-30-2010
barriehie

Quote:

Originally Posted by bsoth

Hey- so we have this fax server that is running a linux kernel and not an actual dist. from what I understand. Here is my problem:

I need to be able to script something to log into the box, run a find similar to the following:
find . -type d -name "0*" -mtime +5 |wc -l

this will list the files that are more than 5 days old? Is this right? If so, great. Now I would like to delete them:

being the newb I am, I figured I would try this one:

rm -rf `find . -type d -name "0*" -mtime +5

?
I have leanrted how to find and delete using:
ls -l |grep "^d.*Sep 13" |xargs rm -rf to delete every file from Sep 13. Works ok I guess.

What I want to really do is set this up in chrontab to delete the specific files that are older than 5 days and run this script every 5 days.

There is also something called busybox that is also giving me problems- no idea what that is.

# rm -rf find . -type d -name "0*" -mtime +5
rm: invalid option -- t
BusyBox v1.00 (2010.06.21-20:43+0000) multi-call binary

Usage: rm [OPTION]... FILE...

# rm -rf `find . -type d -name "0*" -mtime +5
>
but I get the > prompt. What does this mean? how do I deal with it?

If anyone can just help me that we would be great!

thanks
b

You're getting the > prompt because you forgot to close the beginning ' in your CLI. Can also run find with the -exec option to find and delete at the same time.

Code:

find . -type d -name 0* -mtime +5 -exec rm -rf {} \;

or alternatively

Code:

find . -type d -name 0* -mtime +5 | xargs rm -rf
10-31-2010
hazel

Quote:

Originally Posted by bsoth

There is also something called busybox that is also giving me problems- no idea what that is.

# rm -rf find . -type d -name "0*" -mtime +5
rm: invalid option -- t
BusyBox v1.00 (2010.06.21-20:43+0000) multi-call binary

Usage: rm [OPTION]... FILE...

BusyBox is a single program that emulates all the basic Linux commands and utilities; it's just a way of fitting a working Linux shell into a tiny space. When you type "rm" on a system that has BusyBox installed, instead of the rm program running, BusyBox runs - and similarly for all the other commands. Therefore, if you enter erroneous syntax, the error message comes from BusyBox.