Four recommendations for troubleshooting: 1) use a test command that is not so destructive when it fails 2) log output 3) run it more frequently 4) include a positive control entry that you know should work and a negative control that you know won't
For example, replace your original command: 20 1 * * * find /tmp -mtime +7 -type f -exec rm -f { } ';' with this: * * * * * find /tmp -mtime +7 -type f -exec ls -ld { } ';' >> /tmp/cron.log 2>&1 And place some positive/negative controls in your /tmp folder : # touch -t 201901020304 /tmp/z.test.file.pos # touch /tmp/z.test.file.neg This is what shows in the log when cron runs: # cat /tmp/cron.log ls: cannot access '{': No such file or directory ls: cannot access '}': No such file or directory Looks like there's a space between the curly braces. If I remove the space ... # cat /tmp/cron.log -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 2 2019 /tmp/z.test.file.pos You might want to enable verbosity to the rm so that you can confirm what it's doing: * * * * * find /tmp -mtime +7 -type f -exec rm -v -f {} ';' >> /tmp/cron.log 2>&1 # cat /tmp/cron.log removed '/tmp/z.test.file.pos' Once all looks good, adjust the time to when you want the command to run. Good luck and let us know how things go. Regards, - Robert On Sun, Dec 15, 2019 at 6:22 AM Rich Shepard <rshep...@appl-ecosys.com> wrote: > Yesterday I put this command in root's crontab: > > # remove all files in /tmp not modified in 7 days daily at 1:20 > 20 1 * * * find /tmp -mtime +7 -type f -exec rm -f { } ';' > > It is not working as I expected since there are files in /tmp as old as > last > August. There are also old directories not modified for months. > > Should I put this in a shell script and use 'test' first? Would the old > subdirectories removal be fixed by changing the rm option to -rf without > adversely affecting the results? > > Regards, > > Rich > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > PLUG@pdxlinux.org > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug