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jsias99
n00b
Joined: 17 Feb 2005
Posts: 30
Location: Somewhere in Texas
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 Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 3:15 pm Post subject: Help Deleting a folder |
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Hi guys this question is going to sound really newbish, and im sorry for that. I have a script running on the machine it checks email on the pop server and saves it locally on the imap server. but i was leaving out of town and i messed with the script a little forgot to chack my emails and it was saving 154 email every minute, onto my .maildir, i tried deleting the NEW mail folder in the .maildir but everytime i try it it brings the machine down to its knees, any other way i was just trying
rm -r folder name
any help is welcomed thank you guys.
P.S. Sorry im such a noob |
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pjp
Administrator
Joined: 16 Apr 2002
Posts: 20067
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| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 3:26 pm Post subject: |
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Can you do anything with the directory, like ls? If not, you could try using nice with rm to see if that helps.
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jsias99
n00b
Joined: 17 Feb 2005
Posts: 30
Location: Somewhere in Texas
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| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 3:28 pm Post subject: |
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| well everytime i try ls or anything the machine just ends up going to its knees, how do you use nice, im sorry im really new. |
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blue.sca
l33t
Joined: 28 Aug 2003
Posts: 680
Location: Mainz, Germany
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| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 3:44 pm Post subject: |
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you could do | Code: | | ls -la .maildir | wc -l |
so we can see how many files there are about. | Code: | | nice -n 5 rm -r .maildir |
should allow the machine to react on user input. you can try any numbers from 19 to -19 where as lower the number is, the more priority the command gets. 0 is default.
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alkan
Guru
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 385
Location: kasimlar yaylasi
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| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 3:50 pm Post subject: |
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| it happened to me when i had tons of files in a single directory accidentally. My solution was to delete the files partially at each rm command. cd into the directory and issue 'rm 1*' to remove all the files starting with 1, and then 'rm 2*', 'rm a*' and so on. |
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jsias99
n00b
Joined: 17 Feb 2005
Posts: 30
Location: Somewhere in Texas
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| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 3:56 pm Post subject: |
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| so i just type in rm 1 - 0 and rm a-z and A-Z will it work? |
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BlackEdder
Advocate
Joined: 26 Apr 2004
Posts: 2588
Location: Dutch enclave in Egham, UK
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| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 3:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Code: | rm [0-9]*
rm [a-z]* |
will work, but if it is mail then probably most of them start with the same letter |
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jsias99
n00b
Joined: 17 Feb 2005
Posts: 30
Location: Somewhere in Texas
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| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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| well i tryed that it didnt work, any other ideas it kept telling me no file name |
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pjp
Administrator
Joined: 16 Apr 2002
Posts: 20067
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| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 4:23 pm Post subject: |
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| jsias99 wrote: | | well i tryed that it didnt work, any other ideas it kept telling me no file name |
Using nice didn't help? I vaguely recall a similar topic... I'll see if I can find it.
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flash49
Apprentice
Joined: 12 Feb 2005
Posts: 233
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| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 5:07 pm Post subject: |
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| BlackEdder wrote: | | Code: | rm [0-9]*
rm [a-z]* |
will work, but if it is mail then probably most of them start with the same letter |
No, it probably won't work, because:
[0-9]* means "all files starting with a number" and this are too many files to fit in one bash command line. Probably "rm 0*" won't work either...
 But whatever you are doing, your Computer has to create a list of all files in this directory, so your best option is to delete the NEW directory with "nice -n 20 rm NEW" and accept the consequences. 
If the "nice -n 20 rm NEW" does not work, try this:
| Code: | | find NEW |xargs -n1 rm |
For a first test you can substitute the "rm" with "echo" |
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pjp
Administrator
Joined: 16 Apr 2002
Posts: 20067
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| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 5:26 pm Post subject: |
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| flash49 wrote: | | If the "nice -n 20 rm NEW" does not work |
Try 'rm -rf', since rm doesn't remove directories automatically  .
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jsias99
n00b
Joined: 17 Feb 2005
Posts: 30
Location: Somewhere in Texas
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| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 9:25 pm Post subject: |
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| flash49 you are my hero i tried it with your nice command and it worked the machine has deleted about 20 gigs and no sing of slowing down, you guys are great. |
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