deleting large # files

[p7]

hi all

i have a subdirectory with about 700000 files dating from 1999. its taking alot of space, but the client wants me to leave 2009, 2010 alone. does anyone know of an effeceint way to do this?

thx in advance

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

The find command is typically the answer.

find /startdir -type f -mtime +730 |xargs rm

will remove all but files from the last 2 years (730 days). Adjust the number of days to give you the results you want and test by substituting ls instead of rm.


Pete

[Patrick Wallek]

However you do it, this is likely going to take a LONG TIME to run. Having to traverse 700,000 files is not trivial!

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

You might find it faster to copy the two years worth of files you want to keep to another filesystem; 'newfs' the old filesystem (destroying everything therein) and copy the saved files back in.

If you can't do that, you might consider re-mounting your filesystem (assuming you have OnlineJFS) with mount options like '-o nolog,convosync=delay' for the duration of the deletions. This should improve performance. It would be good to have a filesystem backup, of course, before hand.

Regards!

...JRF...