Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello,
I am trying to create a simple bash script that will run on a linux box and when invoked, go through a specified directory and remove the the oldest directory contained there in. This is perhaps not the optimal forum but I am hoping that someone out there can lend an assit before I lose my mind.

Running from the command line the ls* line executes fine, run from a script it does not.

Also, if I attempt to perform ls /data/backups -1A | wc -l again in the loop to update the DirCount, it does not work.

Thanks in advance

#!/bin/bash
while [ $DirCount -ge $MAX]
do
ls -t /data/backups | tail --lines=1|xargs rm -rf
let DirCount-=1
done

In what way does it not execute? What happens? Do you get any error messages? Any output?

Please enclode code in [code] tags.

Where have you initialized $DirCount?

Have you looked at the output of ls -t /data/backups | tails --line=1? That's what you are passing to rm.

The line in question does not throw any errors, the end result that I am looking for (and see when it is run from the command line) simply doesn not happen (i.e. the oldest directory being removed)

All variables were initialized at the top of the script and opearted as advertised. Initialization is as follows prior to loop :

[
NUMBER_OF_BACKUPS=2
BACKUP_DIR=/data/backups
DATE_FORMAT="+%Y-%m-%d_%H_%M_%S"
SRM_DIR=sub
DirCount=`ls /data/backups -1A | wc -l`

if [ $DirCount -ge $NUMBER_OF_BACKUPS ]
then
echo "Reached Maximum of $NUMBER_OF_BACKUPS Backups : Performing Cleanup"
fi
]

Yes, I have looked at the output of the ls -t /data/backups | tails --line=1 command. It contained the name of the oldest directory as expected. Using bash -x to run the script I see rm -rf <name>, agian as I would expect however the directory fails to be removed. Permissions all seem to be set open to allow this to occur.

What does <name> contain?

What does ls -ld <name> show?

What is your current directory (echo $PWD or pwd)?

<name> contians the oldest directory name. In this case TestDir1

ls -ld displays permissions of drwxr x r x myname mygroup size date time and TestDir1

pwd shows /data/backups