how to make a cron job

[rebelo]

Hi,
Rookie question:
Need to delete automaticaly the files in one special folder that are older than 30 days (th
ese files are. txt extension and cretaed by a cgi script).
Believe, by what I´ve read, that a cron job would do it.
How to proceed ?
Do we need a just a command in the c panel cronjob window ?
What to write in that command ?

Any help would be appreciated

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[asmithjr]

you couild use:

find . -type f -mtime 30 -exec rm {} \;

Do some home work. The find . tells it to start from right here so you would actually want something like

find /home/username

the -type f tells it a filetype

the -mtime tells it 30 days old.

So

find /home/username/ -type -f -mtime 30 -exec rm {}\;

would remove ALL files over 30 days old.

This should give you a great start.

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[rebelo]

Getting the following error by email:

find: invalid argument `-f' to `-type'

Any ideas ?

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[asmithjr]

I had a typo,

you do not use -f

find /home/usrname -type f -mtime 30 -exec rm {} \;

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[rebelo]

Does not worK :-(
Have changed for 2 days to test but cretaed file still ther after a week.

find /home/myusername/public_html/mydirectory -type f -mtime 2 -exec rm {} \;

what could be the problem ?

cPanel.net Support Ticket Number:

[cortices]

man find is your friend.

asmithjr pointed you in the right direction. There is just one thing wrong with the command he supplied.

Use -mtime -30 instead of -mtime 30. When using just "30" it only finds files that were modified exactly 30 days ago. When using "-30" it finds all files modified any time within the last 30 days.

Also, you might want to use -ctime instead of -mtime as mtime represents the last time the file was modified which may or may not be the same time it was actually created.

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