Ubuntu – Auto delete files older than 7 days

automationcrondeletefiles

I am a complete noob at linux but I am starting to get the hang of it.
I have an Ubuntu Server 16.04 running an FTP server to backup security video files. The files will be stored in folders like: /home/securityfolder1, /home/securityfolder2, /home/securityfolder3 and so on.

Note that each securityfolderN is a different user.

Because I don't want my hard drives to be full all of the time, I want to delete files older than 7 days in these folders daily.

Best Answer

First, this command will find and delete all files older than 7 days in any subdirectory in /home whose name starts with securityuser:

find /home/securityuser* -mtime +6 -type f -delete

You need -mtime +6 and not +7 because -mtime counts 24h periods. As explained in the -atime section of man find (-mtime works in the same way):

   -atime n
          File  was  last  accessed n*24 hours ago.  When find figures out
          how many 24-hour periods ago the file  was  last  accessed,  any
          fractional part is ignored, so to match -atime +1, a file has to
          have been accessed at least two days ago.

So, to find a file that was modified 7 or more days ago, you need to find files that were modified more than 6 days ago, hence -mtime +6.

The next step is to have this command run once a day. Since each securityuserN is a different user (you might want to rethink that setup, it makes everything more complicated), this must be run as root. So, edit /etc/crontab:

sudo nano /etc/crontab

And add this line:

@daily root find /home/securityuser* -mtime +6 -type f -delete

That will run the find command once a day and delete the files.

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