I've done some googling, and got it to work using this line 'rm -rf
/home/YOURUSERNAME/.local/share/Trash/files/*' but this just
blanket-empties the trash can without any care for retaining 7
days worth of files.
Sharon.
On 3 March 2013 23:27, Sharon Kimble <skimbl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for this, and I've tried it out but its still not deleting files,
> as I output it to a txt.file which still remain empty.
>
> There is a programme, ported from ubuntu, called 'autotrash' in the repos.
> And although I've set it up as per its man page, but its output remains at
> zero, and not working.
>
> Maybe I'm going about this from the wrong end?
>
> Sharon.
>
>
> On 3 March 2013 22:43, Bob Proulx <b...@proulx.com> wrote:
>
>> Sharon Kimble wrote:
>> > I'm trying to get a bash script working from a cron job that will empty
>> > trash of all files and directories that are older than $N [7 days in
>> > this case]. This partly works but is very inefficient in that it
>> > doesn't delete everything that is available to be deleted, just tends
>> > to leave stuff with no apparent reasoning.
>>
>> Very likely you are running into the problem that removing files from
>> the directory causes the directory to be updated. Because the
>> directory is updated it ceases to be old enough to be aged off. This
>> leaves them around until they become old enough to be an age candidate
>> again.
>>
>> Let's walk through the problem step by step.
>>
>> > #!/bin/bash
>>
>> Since there are no bash features I suggest using /bin/sh the standard
>> shell. Others would say "use bash features". :-) I like standard
>> better. A preference.
>>
>> > # emptyTrash.sh
>>
>> The use of a .sh on the end is frowned upon. Sure it is a shell
>> script at this instant. But you actually have a bash script and so it
>> should be called .bash instead of .sh. But next week you might want
>> to convert it to a perl script. Two weeks after that you might want
>> to convert it to a python script. Or Ruby. Encoding the language in
>> the extension then gets in the way. It isn't needed. If your editor
>> is a smart one, and most are these days, then it doesn't need the
>> extension to know how to syntax highlight it.
>>
>> > for SUBDIR in files info
>> > do
>> > echo Lookin\' in Trash/${SUBDIR}...
>> > find ${HOME}/.local/share/Trash/$SUBDIR -mtime +${DAYS} -exec rm
>> -vrf {} \; done
>>
>> Running 'find' and 'for' is inconsistent. The 'find' command can do
>> both. I would have it do both.
>>
>> The "\;" part is the classic old legacy way of running find's -exec.
>> It runs one argument per command. That is less efficient than running
>> as many arguments as possible. The new (ten years old is still new)
>> way to do this and POSIX standard is using "+". Using "+" will stack
>> as many arguments as possible and is very efficient.
>>
>> Let's start by printing the entries and then work from there.
>>
>> find $HOME/.local/share/Trash -mtime +$DAYS -print
>>
>> Files and directories. I would like to remove only the files first.
>>
>> find $HOME/.local/share/Trash -type f -mtime +$DAYS -print
>>
>> I would like find to remove them itself. The -delete option was added
>> to GNU find some years ago and is available in all current GNU systems.
>>
>> # Warning: This fires the -delete option and will delete those files!
>> find $HOME/.local/share/Trash -type f -mtime +$DAYS -delete
>>
>> The files are gone. Directories may be left behind. I would like to
>> remove the directories as a second pass.
>>
>> find $HOME/.local/share/Trash -type d -print
>>
>> Looks good. Let's remove those too. But I am likely to avoid looking
>> to see if a directory should be removed and simply try to remove it
>> and deal with the non-empty errors. These are not files and were only
>> created because the files were put there. No need to look at mtime on
>> the trash directories. Just "rmdir" any empty directory. Using
>> "rmdir" is very safe because it cannot remove files. The "rmdir" can
>> only remove empty directories making it a quite safe command to simply
>> fling out without looking. Can only remove directories from the
>> bottom up so turn on -depth.
>>
>> find $HOME/.local/share/Trash -depth -type d -exec rmdir {} +
>> ...may have some errors about non-empty directories...
>>
>> Looking better. But if a directory is not empty the GNU rmdir command
>> has an option specifically for it. Let's ignore only that case.
>>
>> find $HOME/.local/share/Trash -depth -type d -exec rmdir
>> --ignore-fail-on-non-empty {} +
>>
>> And there we have the components for this type of cleanup the way I
>> would do them. (Others would undoubtedly prefer a different way.
>> There is more than one way to do this.) And so we are left with these
>> two commands run one after the other to do the full clean up.
>>
>> #!/bin/sh
>> # emptyTrash
>> DAYS=7 # retain for N days
>> find $HOME/.local/share/Trash -type f -mtime +$DAYS -delete
>> find $HOME/.local/share/Trash -depth -type d -exec rmdir
>> --ignore-fail-on-non-empty {} +
>>
>> Hope that helps.
>> Bob
>>
>
>
>
> --
> A taste of linux = http://www.sharons.org.uk/taste/index.html
> efever = http://www.efever.blogspot.com/
> efever = http://sharon04.livejournal.com/
> Debian Wheezy, LXDE 2 LibreOffice 3.5.4.2
> Registered Linux user 334501
>
>
>
>
--
A taste of linux = http://www.sharons.org.uk/taste/index.html
efever = http://www.efever.blogspot.com/
efever = http://sharon04.livejournal.com/
Debian Wheezy, LXDE 2 LibreOffice 3.5.4.2
Registered Linux user 334501
