On Sat, 24 Jan 2009, Raymond Norton wrote:

> Mike Miller wrote:
>> On Sat, 24 Jan 2009, Raymond Norton wrote:
>>
>>> find /var/spool/MailScanner/quarantine -mtime +10 -type f -exec rm
>>> -rf {} \;
>>>>>
>>>>> Remove the "-type f"
>>>>
>>>> Will the time stamp on a directory always be at least as new as the
>>>> newest file in the tree within the directory?  Apparently not -- I
>>>> just checked it.  I think you might mean that he should remove the
>>>> "-type f" and also change the "-rf" to "-f".  Look at this on your
>>>> machine:
>>>>
>>>> ls -ld /home
>>>> ls -ld /home/*
>>>>
>>>> See what I mean?
>>>>
>>>> Mike
>>>
>>> I ran this script for the first time last night
>>
>> What script are you talking about?  Please be explicit because we made
>> some recommendations and I don't know which ones you used.  If ran the
>> command shown on the first line above, then you were ignoring or
>> misunderstanding what I wrote above.
>>
>>
>>> and it looks like I ran into this very problem. Instead of leaving
>>> folder 20 days old, it only left folders 8 days old. Is there another
>>> way to modify the script to only remove folders 21 days or older?
>>
>> For testing purposes you can leave off the -exec and everything to the
>> right of it.  Try changing the directory and using different options,
>> stuff like this to see the dates on directories:
>>
>> ls -ld $(find / -mtime +10 -type d) | less
>> ls -ld $(find / -mtime +30 -type d) | less
>>
>> This is the script I am using:
>
> #!/bin/bash
> mysql -ppassword mailscanner<<EOFMYSQL
> delete from maillog where timestamp < date_sub(curdate(), interval 20 day);
> EOFMYSQL
> find /var/spool/MailScanner/quarantine -mtime +20 -exec rm -rfd {} \;


What is the "-d" option to the "rm" command?  It isn't in my "man rm" GNU 
documentation on Ubuntu 8.10.  And, like I said earlier, you have to be 
really, really careful with the "-r" option to rm when you are doing this 
kind of thing.  Try a few experiments without the exec to see how it is 
working for you before you delete things.

Mike