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nadermx
Asked: 2020-05-03 11:49:32 +0800 CST

Delete all files and folders in /tmp older than a day

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I'm trying to delete all files and folders in the /tmp dir that are older than a day.

I know to delete all the files and folders I have to do 

rm -rf *

But I'm unsure how else I find all the files and folders older than a day to delete those and put the cron in.

18.04

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    First, use find to select these files:

    find /tmp -mmin +1440

    will find files that were modified more than 1440 minutes ago. (There is an option to use days instead of minutes, but it rounds upwards and +1 will mean 2 days or more, unfortunately. See notice below).

    Try this, and if you are satisfied that this finds the right files, delete them in one go:

    find /tmp -mmin +1440 -delete

    See man find for other possibilities (last status changed time, access time).

    Notice on the usage of -mtime +1:

    In man find

    It says:

    -mtime n

    File's data was last modified n*24 hours ago.

    But it also says:

    See the comments for -atime to understand how rounding affects the interpretation of file modification times.

    The comments for -atime say:

    When find figures out how many 24-hour periods ago the file was last accessed, any fractional part is ignored, so to match -atime +1, a file has to have been accessed at least two days ago.

    In other words, -mtime can count only in units of 24 hours or one day each so as far as -mtime +1 goes, this means exactly more than one day by at least one day ( ie. two days+ )

    -mmin on the other hand can count in minutes. So, if strict accuracy is vital, then -mmin +1440 ( 1440 minutes = 1 day ) could be used instead of -mtime +1

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