UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi All,

I have a cron job that has worked wonders:

Code:

zip /home/myHostedFolder/public_html/images/_backups/front/$(date +\%Y\%m\%d).zip /home/myHostedFolder/public_html/images/front/* && rm /home/myHostedFolder/public_html/images/front/*

But now work, needs me to modify it. Should be easy but it's been a while.

Instead of zipping everything in a timestamped zip file in a backup folder (_backups)...

Now I need to move all images in:
/home/myHostedFolder/public_html/images/front/*

into a newly created time stamped folder within the same directory:
/home/myHostedFolder/public_html/images/front/newTimeStampedFolder

The idea is to move everything into dated folder for easy viewing over the web.

Thanks

Hi
Are the images still there?
Because of the look of this command, those files would have been removed after the zipfile was created.

As you know how to set a date string, just use that knowledge to mkdir the path required, to which you are going to mv the files to.

hth & gl

new images are uploaded daily, so yes, there will be images in the folder.

so i should make a new directory then move?

hmm, i was hoping to have the new folder inside old. but let me try.

thanks for the reply.

You have a cron job that uses shell command substitution to create a pathname for a zip file that is used by the zip command as an operand.

Why can't you use shell command substitution to create a pathname for a directory that can be given as an operand to mkdir and then as the final operand in a mv command to move your images to that new directory. Whether or not you choose to make that new pathname be a subdirectory of the directory containing the images you want to move is entirely up to you.

Hi Sea and Don,

I finally got around to working on the site. What you both said seems to make the most sense. Will this work?

first cron ran every 2 weeks:

Code:

mv /home/00/public_html/sec/fr/ /home/00/public_html/SG/albums/Fr/$(date +\%Y\%m\%d)  && mkdir /home/00/public_html/sec/fr/

then in another cron:

Code:

find /home/00/public_html/SG/albums/Fr/ -mtime +90 -exec rm {} \;

i haven't tried it. don't want to mess everything up with a novice mistake.

thanks.

Good thinking. Here is a trick which will let you test the most dangerous commands in complete safety: prepend your command with a simple "echo", like this:

Code:

echo mv /home/00/public_html/sec/fr/ /home/00/public_html/SG/albums/Fr/$(date +\%Y\%m\%d)  && echo mkdir /home/00/public_html/sec/fr/

When you use "find" you can use a similar device:

Code:

find /home/00/public_html/SG/albums/Fr/ -mtime +90 -exec echo rm {} \;

Redirect the output to a file and control if the script does what you want it to do. Always check "from both sides": does it process all the files you want processed? Does it NOT process all the files you do NOT want to be processed? If the answer is "yes" on both accounts remove the "echo"-statements and on you go.

A second test might be to create some test-directory structure with some sample files (just use "touch" to create them) and let the commands (without the "echo") run gainst these.

I hope this helps.

bakunin