Ubuntu :: Delete All Files/folders Except Those Specified?
Jul 26, 2011
Although I've been using Ubuntu for a while, I haven't really done any scripting thus far,but now find myself needing to do (what I thought was) some fairly simple stuff.However, despite much searching, I have been unable to find a solution to my problem.I need a script which will delete all of the files/folders from a directory except those I specify. From the command line, I am able to use:rm -r !(constant|system|*.msh|)
which works fine, deleting everything except the 'constant' and 'system' folders (and everything in them) and any files ending in '.msh'. I have tried to put this into a script file, specifying to use the bash shell, and escaping the required characters, but I just get the message 'cannot find !(constant|*.msh)'.I have read that using the find command may be a better way of doing it, but so far I have not been able to make the command work in the way which I need (I have easily been able to delete ALL the files/folders in the directory!).
I have installed a new system on my desktop computer, and would now like to delete files/folders from the web interface, as they no longer reflect the files and folders on my desktop PC. I use my desktop PC to sync files and folders one way to my laptops.
Can't rename, move or delete files or folders that have a foreign character. Code: The file or folder /data/down/done/1999 Taraf de Ha-douks does not exist. Kubuntu Karmic. Fails in konqueror and dolphin.
I want to know how much damage a user can do on my system if he decides to delete everything (or write to in case of corruption).What command or script might i use to check this?
I have an archive directory that needs to be cleaned up once per quarter. The top level (/data/archive/*) directory names change daily, as well as the subdirectories and the filenames (the application names everything according to date). Also, there are two top level directories, bin and incoming, that we can't touch. I want to write a shell script that loops through the 15 or 20 top level directories and deletes all files and subdirectories older than 3 days (skipping the bin and incoming folders). Can someone get me started on a script? I am kinda new to shell scripting.
10.10 on a ext4 partition. I deleted a folder that sat on a NTFS partition that I use as data storage. I note that if I delete folders or files on this NTFS partition there is not the option to move to waste basket - it is just deleted. If the folder still exists on the hard drive (has not been over written) I may be able to retrieve it - but where could it be? On the NTFS partition?
I need to know is there any way to record or tracking or make logging if when user samba delete files or folders i can know that, cause sometimeon samba server some users complain they lost files, though i have daily backup and i can restore their files, i just want to know if or maybe some other users in one group accidentally move or delete the files.
I am trying to use an old box as backup server. I have tried a couple of possibilities along the lines of:
Quote:
rsync -a --delete --progress --log-file=/home/$USER/info.txt -e ssh /home /etc root@192.168.0.106:/mnt/back
The problem is it does not delete files that has been removed from my local system? I run the command as root on the local system.
(I realize I should properly not ssh into the server as the server's root but I'm having trouble with the permissions and I want to make sure everything else works before messing around with it)
Currently I am doing a java project and I renamed some file/folders to start with '.'. i.e. ".project", ".classpath", ".settings/"
I can see them on my desktop but i cannot delete them. In the terminal, "ls" command does not show these files exist. "rm" will also say cannot find these files. How do I get rid of these files/folders?
I have a Ubuntu file server with a mix of 30+ users ( mix of windows and linux ).All are members of the same group. All need read write create access. I want to prevent deletion of certain key folders. How can I achieve this ? sudo chmod -R nnnn ??
I just had a bad experience with a server, and now i have a 17GB lost+found. It appears a lot of the stuff in there are folders which are empty. Since those really serve no purpose as far as recovering data from what I can tell, is there a slick way to delete just the empty folders from my /data/lost+found folder, leaving me with just the stuff I truly need to look through?
I have a USB drive that has a TON of folders on its root level. I want to remove all those folders and their contents except three of them. I know if I do rm -rf that will kill everything, is there a way to exclude three folders, say folder1 folder2 newfolder, and do it all in one statement?
How would i delete all the folders access one i specify.for example if a there are 4 folders namely a b c and d. How would i prevent deleting folder b .Whatever folders other than b should be deleted?
I just can't stand knowing that there's a slight problem with my PC.I have roughly 12.5 Gigs of files, mostly movies that are multiple clones of a particular movie (which was an entirely different problem altogether) and I CANNOT DELETE THESE THINGS! There has to be a simple way to do it from terminal, problem is, I can't seem to find the trash directory in terminal.
I recently moved to a new machine, and I copied my entire home folder across. This included lots of hidden (starting with '.') folders, and in many cases they are config folders for packages which I have not installed on the new machine. They are taking up space, so I would like to delete them, but to go through manually and figure out which ones I need would be very laborious. Is there a way to find, and perhaps delete, config folders for packages that are not installed?
I have an FTP server on my network (currently ran on IIS). When I connect with Nautilus to FTP and try to delete folder (files delete works) I get error.I tried Filezilla and Gnome-Commander as clients - they cat delete directories just fine. I tried to solve this problem for months because I like the convenience of having my FTP bookmarked in Nautilus and use it from there.Today I finally found a reason for Nautilus not being able deletedirectories, but I can't find a solution to that. I've checked FTP logs and saw that all working ftp-clients are performing RMD on directory name only, while Nautilus always prepends directory name by / symbol. So, let's say I'm trying to delete folder call "Test"Filezilla and Gnome-Commander are logged as doing RMD on "Test", but Nautilus was logged as doing RMD on "/Test" and server replied that "/Test" folder doesn't exist
I am happy to report I successfully setup a cloning station using Ubuntu 10.4 Lucid Lynx and Clonezilla. I learned the hard way you have to restore images to a hard drive of a larger size than the drive the image was ripped from. I had already ripped 6 or more images and have them in the Home_Partimag folder and cannot delete or rename these images. I want to remake these images and rip them from smaller hard drives. Any commands I can use to be able to do this?
i have been copying dvd's and now i do not have enough room in my temporary folder,but i cannot find out how to delete the folders and make space to continue
I am administrating a lab in a university and every semester we need to delete all the home folders of the accounts for the next semester. I would like to make a bash script that does this automatically and having trouble with it. Note that I am writing my very first bash script. What I need to do is make a script to delete the following:
Delete everything in /home/$exp$num/$dir when "exp" could be either "rt", "ic" or "sp". "num" could run from 1(single digit) to 45 and dir is "profile" and "work".
This is what I tried to write:
Code:
#!/bin/sh cd /home for exp in "rt ic sp" do
[code]....
What seems to be the problem is the reading of "$exp$num" as a joint expression.
I have noticed that the files and folders search in Unity, only shows up those files which have been amended (or possibly just opened) since the install.
i was wondering if there was a way i could have the search index (or something vaguely equivalent) all the files on my machine. This is especially important given that i reinstall the OS every six months on a new distribution cycle, copying all my old files across.
Without being able to see my old files the search is pretty much reduced to a recent history search.
the permissions for my home directory were accidentally changed from 'access files' to 'create and delete files', and I changed them back, but ever since then I am not able to change any preferences/settings at all. power management, themes, panels, emerald, anything. my user account is supposed to be the administrator, and all the user privliges are checked. how to get control of my computer back?
I've discovered that Dolphin seems to lose random files when copying many large folders.
I first noticed this a few months ago when I tried to copy my music library from one folder to another on the same HDD. It consisted of around 600 folders and 6500 files. During the copy there were no errors but after the copy I found that some of the newly copied folders were missing files. I put it down to human error or a glitch.
Yesterday I tried to copy 13 folders containing rips of some of my DVDs. Each folder basically had one film of either 700MB or 1.4GB. Again no errors showed up during the copy but I found 3 of the newly copied folders were empty.
It's not so critical with music or films but I can't afford to lose work data like this.
Has anyone experienced or seen a similar problem with Dolphin? I'm going to have to do some more extensive testing but this is not good.
The first time I noticed the problem I was running KDE4.3.4 (I think) and now the latest was with KDE4.4.0.
The problem I have is that I need to replace a more complex string, like this: Old string: /mnt/stor6-wc2-dfw1/627896/982574/ New string: /mnt/stor8-wc2-dfw1/369587/302589/ There I don't know how to do it... since the / is what separates the old from the new strings, and the strings that I want to replace have / in it. Also, I would like to know how to specify under what folder replace the files, for example, I want that it search/replaces all files under /var/www/mysite/htdocs folder.
