Delete files older than 30 days

Deleting files and directories is a common task that Linux administrators and users need to perform regularly. While Linux offers various commands like rm, rmdir, unlink to remove files/folders, caution must be exercised to not accidentally delete important data.

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In this comprehensive guide, we will cover the following methods to safely delete files and directories in Linux:

  • Removing Single Files
  • Removing Multiple Files
  • Removing Directories
  • Find and Remove Files/Directories

Removing Single Files

To remove a single file in Linux, the core command is rm. But there are a couple of ways to delete a file.

Using unlink

The unlink command can permanently remove a file by unlinking it from the file system:

$ unlink file.txt

Using rm

The rm command is more commonly used for removing files. To delete a file named file.txt:

$ rm file.txt

By default, rm prompts you for confirmation before removing write-protected files. To always prompt before removing any file, use the -i option:

$ rm -i file.txt

To remove a file without any confirmation prompts, pass the -f option:

$ rm -f file.txt

Some other useful options are -v to verbose what is being removed and -r to remove directories recursively.

Removing Multiple Files

You can remove multiple files by passing all the filenames as arguments to rm:

$ rm file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt

Or make use of wildcards and regular expressions:

$ rm *.tmp
$ rm file-[1-5].txt

Removing Directories

To remove an empty directory, use the rmdir command:

$ rmdir mydir

To remove a directory recursively including all its contents, pass the -r option to rm:

$ rm -r mydir

And to forcefully delete a directory without prompts, use the -rf option:

$ rm -rf mydir

Warning: Use rm -rf very carefully as it can cause severe data loss if run on the wrong directory, especially by the root user.

Find and Remove Files/Directories

The find command offers more advanced ways to search for files/directories to delete based on various criteria like name, size, permissions, user ownership etc.

Some examples:

# Delete files by path/name 
$ find /temp -name "*.tmp" -delete


$ find /var/log -mtime +30 -delete 



$ find . -type d -empty -delete

The key is find‘s ability to match files/folders based on complex conditions, which then can be easily removed using -delete option.

Summary

  • Use rm and rmdir carefully to avoid accidental data loss
  • Take backups before deleting large number of files
  • Leverage find to match and remove files based on different criteria
  • Understand fully the impact before using destructive options like rm -rf

Following these best practices will help you stay safe whileproductively managing files/directories in your Linux system.

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