Auto delete files older than 7 days

Question

I am a complete noob at linux but I am starting to get the hang of it. I have an Ubuntu Server 16.04 running an FTP server to backup security video files. The files will be stored in folders like: /home/securityfolder1, /home/securityfolder2, /home/securityfolder3 and so on.

Note that each securityfolderN is a different user.

Because I don't want my hard drives to be full all of the time, I want to delete files older than 7 days in these folders daily.

Solution 1

First, this command will find and delete all files older than 7 days in any subdirectory in /home whose name starts with securityuser:

find /home/securityuser* -mtime +6 -type f -delete

You need -mtime +6 and not +7 because -mtime counts 24h periods. As explained in the -atime section of man find (-mtime works in the same way):

   -atime n
          File  was  last  accessed n*24 hours ago.  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.

So, to find a file that was modified 7 or more days ago, you need to find files that were modified more than 6 days ago, hence -mtime +6.

The next step is to have this command run once a day. Since each securityuserN is a different user (you might want to rethink that setup, it makes everything more complicated), this must be run as root. So, edit /etc/crontab:

sudo nano /etc/crontab

And add this line:

@daily root find /home/securityuser* -mtime +6 -type f -delete

That will run the find command once a day and delete the files.

Solution 2

as per i my knowledge:

try find command like this:

find ./dirc/* -mtime +6 -type f -delete

./dirc/* : is your directory (Path)
-mtime +6 : modified more than 6 days ago (therefore, at least 7 days ago)
-type f : only files
-delete : no surprise. Remove it to test before like rm

Comments

[Jacco]

thank you for your answer. Does ./dirc/* means: ./home/securityfolder1/* or is this wrong?

[Jacco]

I just tried it out in my virtualbox as find /home/jacco/ -mtime +1 -type f -delete and it seems to work. How can i automate this?

[Jacco]

i am like the supernoob right here cuz the part of making the script, does this mean a file with #!/bin/bash and the code under that? or am i really stupid right here?

[Melebius]

@JaccovandeWijgaart After the command has been tested, you can just put it into that user’s crontab without making a script. And unlike km8295, I’d prefer absolute paths, especially when deleting.

[Jacco]

@Melebius so putting find /home/securityfolder1/ -mtime +7 -type f -delete find /home/securityfolder2/ -mtime +7 -type f -delete find /home/securityfolder3/ -mtime +7 -type f -delete in the crontab is good? or does it have to be: @daily find /home/securityfolder1/ -mtime +7 -type f -delete?

[Melebius]

@JaccovandeWijgaart You’ll definitely need @daily or something similar and the * at end of path. Add each command to the corresponding user’s crontab, or do it all as root (at your own risk).

[Melebius]

@km8295 The path in find command should be closed in quotes (preferably ''), especially when containing glob patterns like *.

[terdon]

@Melebius no, tha path should not be quoted, especially when containing glob characters. You want it to be expanded by the shell and the quoting would block that. Try, for example: find '/u*' -name local. It's directives like -name "foo*" that should be quoted when containing glob characters.

[Melebius]

@terdon You are right, my fault. I use mostly . as path for find and focus on -name.

[terdon]

@km8295 this will find files that are 6 days or older, not 7 days or older.

[Cbhihe]

+1 Driving the nail a little deeper and maybe reiterating Melebius' suggestion to OP, that find '/home/securityuser/*' -mtime +6 -type f -delete (with all pertinent and appropriate changes in user creation) might generally be a better idea than find '/home/securityuser*' -mtime +6 -type f -delete (no slash in path)... ?

[terdon]

@Cbhihe no, the target directories are called /home/securityuserN, so without the slash, they won't be found.

[terdon]

@Cbhihe no offense taken! And yes, using separate users for this is not a good idea.

[Stelios Adamantidis]

+1 From me. Just note one detail as I was running this on RHEL: the wildcard didn't work on the path. I had to put it on the -name: find /home/ -name 'securityuser*' -mtime +6 -type f -delete

[terdon]

@SteliosAdamantidis oh wow, I completely missed that! Yes, the original version wouldn't work since I had quoted 'securityuser*'. The wildcard should be expanded by the shell, not by find, so it should have been securityuser* (no quotes). See updated answer. Thanks for pointing it out, Stelio, I can't believe nobody noticed before! Ti vlakas!

[Stelios Adamantidis]

LOL you are anything but that! Keep up the good work.

[Newbie]

Can we add some exceptions to some files that we don't want to delete?

[terdon]

@Newbie yes, but that's a different question. Look at the -not option of find. For example find /home/securityuser* -mtime +6 -type f -not -name wantedFile -delete.