Delete Files By Schedule Continued

[plexter]

Hello all again,

I have run into some issues with my script and now require to change my strategy with the linked situation. I'm hoping someone will be able to assist?

Please refer to the forum post for details:

http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=651

Basically the above works fine in itself. However now we will require the ability to skip some directories.

Ideally it would be nice to be able to first generate a list of all the directories. All the directories would be kept in a MySQL database (for other reasons) this could be done with a SQL query I'm sure. In the SQL database we will have a field that says delete or not delete basically. Is there someway we can then adapt this to work in the same way and delete files on a schedule excluding "not delete"?

Is it possible to have RM or FIND read from a text file?

I am thinking it would be ideal to issue a SQL query to export all entries with "DELETE" and then have RM read from the exported txt file. (if possible?)

Does anyone have any idea how I can do this effectively?

Thanks so much!

[ocicat]

Ideally it would be nice to be able to first generate a list of all the directories. All the directories would be kept in a MySQL database...
cron can run scripts or binaries. Given that your requirements continue to evolve, I would suggest that you move now to a fuller, more sophistated scripting language such as Perl or Python which can read directly from databases as well as text files.
Is it possible to have RM or FIND read from a text file?
Scripts can construct commands which are based partly on information maintained in a text file.

[plexter]

Thanks for the reply.

I am not so familiar with those langs I suppose I can try using PHP though.

Thanks :)

[ephemera]

if you provide more (exact) details maybe we could suggest a quick script.

[TerryP]

You can do it through PHP -- it's actually quite a nice language for stuff if you know what your doing.

short run & delete Perl/PHP/SQL scripts can also save bandwidth when manipulating files on a remote server, if ssh access is unavailable but ftp/sftp is.


btw -- xargs is a great friend for feeding data into rm and programs with similiar usage styles ;-)