On 01/20/14 14:37, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2014-01-20 6:51 AM, Neil Bothwick <n...@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Mon, 20 Jan 2014 06:38:40 -0500, Tanstaafl wrote:
>>
>>> The pertinent part of the script is:
>>>
>>>> # delete aged backup files, keeping 60 nightlies and 45 (5 days of)
>>>> hourlies rm $(ls -1t $MySQL_BACKUP_DIR_nightly/* | tail -n +61)
>>>> rm $(ls -1t $MySQL_BACKUP_DIR_hourly/* | tail -n +46)
>>>
>>> It works fine and does what it is supposed to, but the email I get as a
>>> result of the script running says only this in the body:
>>>
>>> rm: missing operand
>>> Try 'rm --help' for more information.
>>
>> Do you have a file with an odd name in either of those directories,
>> particularly one starting with a -
>
> No, they are all sql.gz files, starting with the date, like:
>
> 2014-01-05_0958-hostname-all.sql.gz
>
>> You could try adding "echo rm $(ls -1t ..." to the script to see what it
>> is actually trying to run.
>>
>> Or you could use find instead
>>
>> find $MySQL_BACKUP_DIR_nightly -type f -mtime +60 -exec rm {} +
>
> Ok, may try that... thx...
find -exec (or the shorter find -delete) is the preffered tool for this
job. As you have it, you are blindly deleting whatever happens to show
up in ls and woe betide the results on the next run if one fails.
find OTOH lets you specify exactly what you want to delete rather than
doing text manipulation on ls output and praying it might coincide with
what you want. [been there, done that, caused catastrophic data loss,
bought lots of beer as penance]
--
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckin...@gmail.com
