How to Find and Remove Old or Inactive Files

1. Become superuser or assume an equivalent role.

   Roles contain authorizations and privileged commands. For more information about roles, see Configuring RBAC (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Security Services.

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

   Identifies the directory you want to search. Directories below this directory are also searched.

   -atime +nnn

   Finds files that have not been accessed within the number of days (nnn) that you specify.

   -mtime +nnn

   Finds files that have not been modified within the number of days (nnn) that you specify.

   filename

   Identifies the file that contains the list of inactive files.

3. Remove the inactive files found listed in the previous step.

   # rm `cat filename`

   where filename identifies the file that was created in the previous step. This file contains the list of inactive files.

Example 6–11 Finding and Removing Old or Inactive Files

The following example shows files in the /var/adm directory and the subdirectories that have not been accessed in the last 60 days. The /var/tmp/deadfiles file contains the list of inactive files. The rm command removes these inactive files.

# find /var/adm -type f -atime +60 -print > /var/tmp/deadfiles &
# more /var/tmp/deadfiles
/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`
#