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Full Discussion: UNIX Script to clean files
Top Forums UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers UNIX Script to clean files Post 303033053 by bakunin on Friday 29th of March 2019 07:12:03 AM
Old 03-29-2019
First off, welcome to the forum as well as the family of the most powerful OSes there is in the world. You will find that Unix - any Unix, including Linux - is a set of finely tuned tools, just like an orchestra is a set of highly trained musicians. Let the right conductor - you - step up and they will blow the audience away.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wert468
I need a script that would delete files which are more than "X" number of days old
Let us start right here, at your premise. In UNIX every file has not one but several timestamps. There is:

- creation time
- modification time
- access time

and they are all set independently. You open a text editor and write a new file. All three of these times are set. After some time you open the file in a text editor again and change something - only the modification time and the access time (because to change it you need to read it first) is changed. Some time after this you display the files contents - only the access time is updated.

Also notice that many files on a UNIX system are important or even vital even if they are NOT updated regularly. I.e. the configuration file for a web server is being read when the web server starts, so its access time may be 2 months past if it runs for 2 months. You still shouldn't delete it, though, if you want to be able to start the webserver again. (notice that UNIX systems running for months or even years is - unlike Windows systems - rather normal. I have actually customers complain to me if i want to restart their server once a year after some major OS update. "You restarted already last year, why now again?" - no, i do NOT exaggerate here, i heard, word for word, exactly this complaint. In the OS i work with the most - AIX, IBMs UNIX - it is even possible to do OS and kernel updates under load with no interruption of the service. For exactly these situations where customers complain about the necessity reboot once a year or every other year.)

On the other hand, UNIX systems do not have "drives" but only one (uniform treelike) filesystem. So you may identify one or several branches in this tree where you want to start the cleaning operation and leave alone all the others.

In light of this you might want to rethink and restate your goals and we can discuss what might be done then.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
 

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LEARN ABOUT XFREE86

dh_clean

DH_CLEAN(1)							     Debhelper							       DH_CLEAN(1)

NAME
       dh_clean - clean up package build directories

SYNOPSIS
       dh_clean [debhelperoptions] [-k] [-d] [-Xitem] [path...]

DESCRIPTION
       dh_clean is a debhelper program that is responsible for cleaning up after a package is built. It removes the package build directories, and
       removes some other files including debian/files, and any detritus left behind by other debhelper commands. It also removes common files
       that should not appear in a Debian diff:
	 #*# *~ DEADJOE *.orig *.rej *.SUMS TAGS .deps/* *.P *-stamp

       It does not run "make clean" to clean up after the build process. Use dh_auto_clean(1) to do things like that.

       dh_clean should be the last debhelper command run in the clean target in debian/rules.

FILES
       debian/clean
	   Can list other paths to be removed.

	   Note that directories listed in this file must end with a trailing slash.  Any content in these directories will be removed as well.

OPTIONS
       -k, --keep
	   This is deprecated, use dh_prep(1) instead.

	   The option is removed in compat 12.

       -d, --dirs-only
	   Only clean the package build directories, do not clean up any other files at all.

       -Xitem --exclude=item
	   Exclude files that contain item anywhere in their filename from being deleted, even if they would normally be deleted. You may use this
	   option multiple times to build up a list of things to exclude.

       path ...
	   Delete these paths too.

	   Note that directories passed as arguments must end with a trailing slash.  Any content in these directories will be removed as well.

SEE ALSO
       debhelper(7)

       This program is a part of debhelper.

AUTHOR
       Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>

11.1.6ubuntu2							    2018-05-10							       DH_CLEAN(1)
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