Shell Programming and Scripting

Trying to delete my 3 oldest files.

I am learning despite the many questions.

This shows the files.

Code:

ls -1r /media/andy/MAXTOR_SDB1/Ubuntu_Mate_18.04/Ubuntu_Documents.zip_* | tail -n+6

adding this on did not work.

Code:

| -exec rm {}

------ Post updated at 05:43 PM ------

This works, but I seek advice from the gurus.

Code:

ls -1r /media/andy/MAXTOR_SDB1/Ubuntu_Mate_18.04/Ubuntu_Documents.zip_* | tail -n+3 > To_Be_Deleted.txt
xargs rm  < To_Be_Deleted.txt

I can see a problem.

Each time it runs it will delete more files until they are all gone. :-)

------ Post updated at 09:02 PM ------

I think I need to capture the count of files, and then control execution to remove that count.

Think about your requirement.
Maybe it is better to keep a certain number of files?

You are right.

Keeping backups 3 days would be unacceptable in most organization.

Yes.
A lot is depending on being able to restore. :-)

What difference does that make?

If a criminal gets into a system or a rouge employee does bad things to data, that is normally not discovered immediately, something it might be not be discovered for many days, weeks or even months.

Three days of backup assumes that you are not concerned about any of those basic IT security topics and you just want to restore from a crash.

That's a very narrow view of the reason for making backups.

I have already told you that I am NOT an admin.