Delete all folders older than X days using Shell

Question

my backups are stored in folders. e.g

 **05092013** > 
 - File1.sql
 - File2.sql
 - File1.tar
 - File2.tar

and so on.

Now I want to delete all Folders that are older than X Days.

I tried this

find $FILEDIR -mtime +14 -exec rm {} \;

but it only deletes all files and not the folders. how can i delete all files and folders that are older?

can someone help me?

Thx in advance cSGermany

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 05 '13 at 12:44

4

Use -r?

find "$FILEDIR" -mtime +14 -exec rm -ir {} \;

Change -ir to just -r if you know what you're doing.

Or use -delete:

find "$FILEDIR" -mtime +14 -delete

But please, please make sure you know what you're doing.

You could add checks like this too to make sure $FILEDIR is always somewhere in your home directory:

[[ $FILEDIR == /home/abc/* ]] && find "$FILEDIR" -mtime +14 -delete

answered Sep 05 '13 at 12:44

konsolebox

I don't know exactly what I'm doing ;) This is quite new to me. But it is not possible to delete files which are not in the FILEDIR directory?! – invictus Sep 05 '13 at 13:14
so: find $FILEDIR -type d -mtime +14 -exec rm -r {} \; should work? – invictus Sep 05 '13 at 13:18
@cSGermany Add `-mindepth 1`: `[[ $FILEDIR == /home/abc/* ]] && find "$FILEDIR" -mindepth 1 -mtime +14 -delete`. Another option to add checks without using `[[ ]]` is to use `-wholename`: `find "$FILEDIR" -mindepth 1 -wholename '/home/abc/*' -mtime +14 -delete`. – konsolebox Sep 05 '13 at 13:20

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 05 '13 at 12:49

1

to find only directory, you could add find $FILEDIR -type d ... it could avoid to remove files (e.g. files under your given root dir) by mistake.
to remove a non-empty directory, you need rm -r, so -r option is important here.

answered Sep 05 '13 at 12:49

Kent

it works but also deletes the mainfolder "backups". how can i prevent it to delete this folder? – invictus Sep 05 '13 at 13:22
it seems konsolebox's answer had solved your problem? @cSGermany – Kent Sep 05 '13 at 13:24
Booth answers solved it! Thank you for that. But the Problem is that it also deletes the main folder. – invictus Sep 05 '13 at 13:25
You'r right. I'm not used to get answers that fast, like from you two guys, so i overlooked it :D – invictus Sep 05 '13 at 13:30

2 Answers2