"rm -r `" help

[Lucy2009_1]

Hi,
I have a cron job running to clean logs old
than 3 days. There is always some error msg
in the log. How to get rid of it?

# /usr/bin/find $FPATH -mtime +3 -exec rm -r {} \; >> /tmp/clean_log 2>&1

Example msg in /tmp/clean_log:
/usr/bin/find: /my-path/xyz: no such file or directory.

The xyz directory already got removed even before removing the files in xyz. Then "rm -r"
try to remove it again?

Thanks in advance,

IDT

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi:

You really want to descend the directory and deal with its contents first. Hence:

# /usr/bin/find $FPATH -depth -mtime +3 -exec rm -r {} \+ >> /tmp/clean_log 2>&1

Notice the addition of '-depth'. Notice, too, that I changed the semicolon (;) to a plus (+) character. This causes find to buffer many arguments together and '-exec' the process passing them as a block. This avoids spawning one process per file found, greatly improving performance.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Lucy2009_1]

James,
It almost work but it complains:
find: missing argument to '-exec'

IDT

[Peter Nikitka]

Hi,

write a twoliner "/tmp/myrm"
#!/usr/bin/sh
rm -r "$@"

and after
chmod +x /tmp/myrm

use
find $FPATH -depth -mtime +3 -exec /tmp/myrm {} \+ >> /tmp/clean_log 2>&1

mfG Peter

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

> It almost work but it complains:
find: missing argument to '-exec'

Then, I suspect that you are running a release much earlier than 11.11 or not an HP-UX. In this case, go back to the use of the semicolon in lieu of the "+", or pipe the 'find' output to 'xargs' to do the buffering.

By the way, since you are recursively removing files and directories, you could also do:

... rm -rf ...

...which has the property of suppressing non-existent file messages.

Beware, that by not specifying FILES (with '-type f') you may be taking DIRECTORIES and the FILES therein that you DON'T want! That is because any file that is removed from a directory causes the 'mtime' of the *directory* to be updated.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Lucy2009_1]

Thanks James & Peter!