Write Your Own Method of Script using the below scenario and comment. Recently i came across this situation where i could not able to delete more than x days data using the find command due to -mtime is not matching.

Delete More than x Days Data

Scenario: Every day from Monday to Friday one directory will be created under /fullbackup/dailybackup/YYYY-MM-DD and it will move same dirctory to its parent directory everyday midnight /fullbackup/archive/, However Saturday, Sunday and Monday directories will move to /fullbackup/archive path every Monday evening.

Directory Names Example:

$ ls -ltrdrwxrwxrwx 2 ravi backupgroup 4096 Dec 29 12:25 2018-12-28
drwxrwxrwx 2 ravi backupgroup 4096 Dec 29 12:25 2018-12-29

Question: I would like to delete directories older than two days from /fullbackup/archive path. How do you do it using any scripting methods?

Problem Statement: I was trying to use find . -type d -mtime +4 -exec rm -rf {} \;. This command does not work because the modified date for all moved directories on Monday is the same. I can’t differentiate the last three directories modified date which is -mtime.

How Do you solve it.?? Write a Shell Script to accomplish this task. Should run through crontab and clear directories older than two days.

Shell Script to Delete More than x Days Data

#!/bin/bash
## Delete the Directories based on Directory name validation
ls -ltr /fullbackup/archive/ |awk '{print $9}' > /scripts/dirs
for i in `cat /scripts/dirs`; do
STARTTIME=$(date +%s -d"$i 00:00:00")
ENDTIME=$(date +%s)
echo $((ENDTIME-STARTTIME)) | awk '{print int($1/60)}' > /scripts/value
COUNT=`cat /scripts/value`
if [ $COUNT -gt 2880 ]; then
echo "Directory /fullbackup/archive/$i is Older than 2Days Deleting" >> /scripts/joblog.log
rm -rf /fullbackup/archive/$i
fi
done

Explanation

• ls -ltr line will list all the directories on the full backup path and print 9th column using awk and store output to file
• For loop is using output file and prints one directory name YYYY-MM-DD 
• STARTTIME will convert directory name to EPOC time by adding 00:00:00 Hours, Minutes, and Seconds
• ENDTIME prints current date & time in EPOC time format
• echo statement will minus End time – start time and print value into minutes
• COUNT variable is assigned with minutes value
• if statement will validate value is more than 2880 minutes means more than two days of time
• if the value is more than 2880 then rm will delete the directory

Solve the scenario using your own method and post the solution in a comment. Thanks.

Note: Above script works only when the directory name is Year-Month-Date otherwise it will give an error message.

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Ravi Kumar Ankam

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