Ok here is my issue. I have processes which will get screwed up and not run because certain log directories wind up filled too much and a directory will have 100,000 files in it. The only way to fix this is to move files out of this directory until the number of files is small enough that the system will clean it up. No more than 1000 or so files can be there.

This is a long process as I can't just do cp * because I get argument too long. I've been trying to do a

Code:

find * | head -1000 | xargs cp

type of command to simply spew out 1000 files and copy or move them to another folder. Then I could simply !! that until they are all moved. Or loop it somehow. But, I cannot get this to work I do not know what i'm doing wrong here with xargs.

Code:

find * -exec cp {} /tmp/testcopy \;

This does work except that there is no limiting the files there. So i'll just run into the same arguement list too long if the directory is crazy big. I can't limit them by filename or anything like that either. All the names are just crazy numbers with no real meaning. So the only way I can think to limit them si with tail or head. Something like that.

Any ideas would be welcome. I also can't put scripts on boxes or anything. So whatever command I run has to be something I can simply punch into the prompt and execute.