Deleting Files/Directories X Number of Days or Older in Linux

March 15, 2007

In order to help keep your servers disk space free, often times you will need to delete files and directories of a certain age or older. You can do this various ways however using the find command can be a very effective technique. Always use caution when doing mass deletes, or you may end up with to much free space.

To find FILES DIRECTORIES 60 days or older

find /path/to/the/directory/* -mtime +60 -exec ls -la {} \;

To find and delete FILES ONLY 60 days or older

find /path/to/the/directory/* -mtime +60 -exec rm {} \;

To find and delete DIRECTORIES FILES 60 days or older

find /path/to/the/directory/* -mtime +60 -exec rm -rf {} \;

*Special Note
mtime = The modication time of the INODE not to be confused with the time you see when doing and ls

Comments for “Deleting Files/Directories X Number of Days or Older in Linux”

  1. Nathan commented on May 15, 2007

    or in cfengine:

    sdserver01.Hr14.Min00_05::
    /path/to/the/directory pattern=* age=60 inform=false recurse=2

    😉