[ilugd] Fwd: Delete thousands of folders and files
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Anupam Jain [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 1:57 PM, Tanveer Singh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I have a directory called somedir
Inside this directory there are thousands of subdirectories(20,000+)
and even more number of small files(100,000+)
If I do a \rm -rf somedir, it takes hours.
Is there a way to quickly delete this directory.
Currently I use Konqueror and it does the job more quickly, but still
its pretty slow.
1) You can run the process in the background so that you can still do
other work.
OR
2) use the --directory option which will unlink the directory even if
it's non empty. But in this case the system will recursively unlink
all the files the next time you run fsck and you'll have to wait a
long time then.
Basically if you want to do something NOW which expects the directory
to not be there, go with option 2. Else stick to the usual option 1.
-- Anupam
Currently I do this
mv somedir somedir.old
find somedir.old -name * -exec rm -rf {} \;
I was hoping for some quick delete kind of stuff.
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Re: [ilugd] Fwd: Delete thousands of folders and files
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 2:27 PM, Tanveer Singh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Anupam Jain [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 1:57 PM, Tanveer Singh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I have a directory called somedir
Inside this directory there are thousands of subdirectories(20,000+)
and even more number of small files(100,000+)
If I do a \rm -rf somedir, it takes hours.
Is there a way to quickly delete this directory.
Currently I use Konqueror and it does the job more quickly, but still
its pretty slow.
1) You can run the process in the background so that you can still do
other work.
OR
2) use the --directory option which will unlink the directory even if
it's non empty. But in this case the system will recursively unlink
all the files the next time you run fsck and you'll have to wait a
long time then.
Basically if you want to do something NOW which expects the directory
to not be there, go with option 2. Else stick to the usual option 1.
-- Anupam
Currently I do this
mv somedir somedir.old
find somedir.old -name * -exec rm -rf {} \;
I was hoping for some quick delete kind of stuff.
Hmm well that statement will take a lot longer than an rm -rf! But the
mv idea is a good one if all you want is to make the directory
invisible to some process that expects it to be named a certain way.
Just rename the directory to a different name for a quick 'delete' and
then do an rm -rf when you have more time..
-- Anupam
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Re: [ilugd] Fwd: Delete thousands of folders and files
If you pipe your find output to xargs it will run a lot faster : find
somedir ¦ xargs rm -rf should make quick work of the files.
Justin
On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 4:57 am, Tanveer Singh wrote:
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Anupam Jain [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 1:57 PM, Tanveer Singh [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
I have a directory called somedir
Inside this directory there are thousands of
subdirectories(20,000+)
and even more number of small files(100,000+)
If I do a \rm -rf somedir, it takes hours.
Is there a way to quickly delete this directory.
Currently I use Konqueror and it does the job more quickly, but
still
its pretty slow.
1) You can run the process in the background so that you can still
do
other work.
OR
2) use the --directory option which will unlink the directory even
if
it's non empty. But in this case the system will recursively unlink
all the files the next time you run fsck and you'll have to wait a
long time then.
Basically if you want to do something NOW which expects the
directory
to not be there, go with option 2. Else stick to the usual option
1.
-- Anupam
Currently I do this
mv somedir somedir.old
find somedir.old -name * -exec rm -rf {} \;
I was hoping for some quick delete kind of stuff.
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Re: [ilugd] Fwd: Delete thousands of folders and files
Tanveer Singh wrote:
Currently I do this
mv somedir somedir.old
find somedir.old -name * -exec rm -rf {} \;
I was hoping for some quick delete kind of stuff.
What filesystem is this on ? if its ext3 you can change your drive cache
policy, disable index's, disable time updates etc ( there must be a few
dozen tweaks that most distro's put in with new ext3's that could slow
you down a bit )..
Also, you might want to think about what you doing here... the find
somedir with hit a directory and never return till everything under
there is done. so perhaps start with a director really deep and work
your way up, if you dont want to hit i/o on the machine too hard
--
Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/ : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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