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Operating Systems Linux Red Hat Unable to copy files due to many files in directory Post 302696405 by Don Cragun on Wednesday 5th of September 2012 02:36:17 AM
Old 09-05-2012
If you have a billion files in a directory, anything you try to do accessing a file in that directory is going to take a LONG time. In this case you have to read the directory twice for each file found that is less than 48 hours old. You said you're copying files, but there is nothing in the command line you listed that will copy anything. The command line you gave will search for groups of names of files that have been modified within the last 48 hours and then read the directory again for each group to print the names of those files.

The time needed to run this pipeline would probably be cut in half (while producing the same results except that the order in which the files are printed may be different) if you used the command:
Code:
find . -mtime -2

instead of the command:
Code:
find . -mtime -2 -print | xargs ls -d

Note that if a lot of files have been changed in the last two days, neither of these will give you a sorted list of the files that have changed.

Note also that if any filenames in the file hierarchy rooted in the current directory contain a space, tab, or newline character, the command you have using xargs will fail, and the output from the replacement command I suggested may be ambiguous.
 

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BACKUP(8)						      System Manager's Manual							 BACKUP(8)

NAME
backup - backup files SYNOPSIS
backup [-djmnorstvz] dir1 dir2 OPTIONS
-d At top level, only directories are backed up -j Do not copy junk: *.Z, *.bak, a.out, core, etc -m If device full, prompt for new diskette -n Do not backup top-level directories -o Do not copy *.o files -r Restore files -s Do not copy *.s files -t Preserve creation times -v Verbose; list files being backed up -z Compress the files on the backup medium EXAMPLES
backup -mz . /f0 # Backup current directory compressed backup /bin /usr/bin # Backup bin from RAM disk to hard disk DESCRIPTION
Backup (recursively) backs up the contents of a given directory and its subdirectories to another part of the file system. It has two typ- ical uses. First, some portion of the file system can be backed up onto 1 or more diskettes. When a diskette fills up, the user is prompted for a new one. The backups are in the form of mountable file systems. Second, a directory on RAM disk can be backed up onto hard disk. If the target directory is empty, the entire source directory is copied there, optionally compressed to save space. If the target directory is an old backup, only those files in the target directory that are older than similar names in the source directory are replaced. Backup uses times for this purpose, like make. Calling Backup as Restore is equivalent to using the -r option; this replaces newer files in the target directory with older files from the source directory, uncompressing them if necessary. The target directory con- tents are thus returned to some previous state. SEE ALSO
tar(1). BACKUP(8)
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