How to Find and Remove Old or Inactive Files

Part of the job of cleaning up heavily loaded file systems involves locating and removing files that have not been used recently. You can locate unused files using the ls or find commands.

Other ways to conserve disk space include emptying temporary directories such as the ones located in /var/tmp or /var/spool, and deleting core and crash dump files.

How to List the Newest Files

List files, displaying the most recently created or changed files first, by using the ls -t command.

$ ls -t [directory]

Example–Listing the Newest Files

The following example shows how to use ls -tl to locate the most recent files within the /var/adm directory. The sulog file was created or edited most recently.

$ ls -tl /var/adm
total 134
-rw-------   1 root     root         315 Sep 24 14:00 sulog
-r--r--r--   1 root     other     350700 Sep 22 11:04 lastlog
-rw-r--r--   1 root     bin         4464 Sep 22 11:04 utmpx
-rw-r--r--   1 adm      adm        20088 Sep 22 11:04 wtmpx
-rw-r--r--   1 root     other          0 Sep 19 03:10 messages
-rw-r--r--   1 root     other          0 Sep 12 03:10 messages.0
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root       11510 Sep 10 16:13 messages.1
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root           0 Sep 10 16:12 vold.log
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     sys          512 Sep 10 15:33 sm.bin
drwxrwxr-x   5 adm      adm          512 Sep 10 15:19 acct
drwxrwxr-x   2 adm      sys          512 Sep 10 15:19 sa
-rw-------   1 uucp     bin            0 Sep 10 15:17 aculog
-rw-rw-rw-   1 root     bin            0 Sep 10 15:17 spellhist
drwxr-xr-x   2 adm      adm          512 Sep 10 15:17 log
drwxr-xr-x   2 adm      adm          512 Sep 10 15:17 passwd

How to Find and Remove Old or Inactive Files

1. 1. Become superuser.
   2. Find files that have not been accessed for a specified number of days and list them in a file.
      

      # find directory -type f[-atime + nnn] [-mtime + nnn] -print > filename

      directory	Directory you want to check. Directories below this also will be checked.
      -atime +nnn	Finds files that have not been accessed within the number of days you specify.
      -mtime +nnn	Finds files that have not been modified within the number of days you specify.
      filename	File containing the list of inactive files.

   3. Remove the inactive files that you listed in the previous step.
      

      # rm `cat filename`

      filename

      File created in previous step which contains the list of inactive files.

Example–Finding and Removing Old or Inactive Files

The following example locates regular files in /var/adm and its directories that have not been accessed in the last 60 days and saves the list of inactive files in /var/tmp/deadfiles. These files are then removed with the rm command.

# find /var/adm -type f -atime +60 -print > /var/tmp/deadfiles &
# more /var/tmp/deadfiles
/var/adm/log/asppp.log
/var/adm/aculog
/var/adm/spellhist
/var/adm/wtmpx
/var/adm/sa/sa13
/var/adm/sa/sa27
/var/adm/sa/sa11
/var/adm/sa/sa23
/var/adm/sulog
/var/adm/vold.log
/var/adm/messages.1
/var/adm/messages.2
/var/adm/messages.3
# rm `cat /var/tmp/deadfiles`
#

How to Clear Out Temporary Directories

1. 1. Become superuser.
   2. Change to the /var/tmp directory.
      

      # cd /var/tmp

   3. Delete the files and subdirectories in the current directory.
      

      # rm -r *

      Change to other directories containing unnecessary temporary or obsolete subdirectories and files, and delete them by repeating Step 3 above.

Example–Clearing Out Temporary Directories

The following example shows how to clear out the /var/tmp directory, and verifies that all files and subdirectories were removed.

# cd /var/tmp
# ls
deadfiles           wxconAAAa0003r:0.0  wxconAAAa000NA:0.0
test_dir            wxconAAAa0003u:0.0  wxconAAAa000cc:0.0 
wxconAAAa000zs:0.0
# rm -r *
# ls
#

How to Find and Delete core Files

1. 1. Become superuser.
   2. Change the directory to where you want to start the search.
   3. Find and remove any core files in this directory and its subdirectories.
      

      # find . -name core -exec rm {} \;

Example–Finding and Deleting core Files

The following example shows how to find and remove core files from the user account belonging to jones using the find command.

# cd /home/jones
# find . -name core -exec rm {} \;

How to Delete Crash Dump Files

Crash dump files can be very large, so if you have enabled your system to store these files, do not retain them for longer than necessary.

1. 1. Become superuser.
   2. Change to the directory where crash dump files are stored.
      

      # cd /var/crash/system

      system

      System that created the crash dump files.

      Caution : Be sure you are in the right directory before completing the following step. The next step deletes all files in the current directory.

   3. Remove the crash dump files.
      

      # rm *

   4. Verify the crash dump files are removed.
      

      # ls

Example–Deleting Crash Dump Files

The following example shows how to remove crash dump files from the system venus, and how to verify that the crash dump files were removed.

# cd /var/crash/venus
# rm *
# ls