From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Oct 22 23:18:45 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id XAA02077 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 23:18:45 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions) Received: from shell.futuresouth.com (shell.futuresouth.com [207.141.254.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id XAA02028 for ; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 23:17:10 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from fullermd@futuresouth.com) Received: from shell.futuresouth.com (mail.futuresouth.com [207.141.254.21]) by shell.futuresouth.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id BAA03577; Thu, 23 Oct 1997 01:16:36 -0500 (CDT) Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 01:16:35 -0500 (CDT) From: "Matthew D. Fuller" To: Shawn Ramsey cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: deleted huge directory In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, 22 Oct 1997, Shawn Ramsey wrote: > > > Does anyone have any suggestions for deleting a huge directory? The > > > direcory is /var/news/spool/control/cancel. The directory is too large to > > > even do a ls. If I try doing ls, it eats up all the avail. RAM(140+mb) and > > > hangs. Anyone? I would try a wildcard, but I don't know what the filenames > > > are. (This is a very large news server, and this directory has never been > > > touch as far as I know.) > > > > Dear god. > > If you don't mind, I'll just borrow all that space..... > > Can you get a file listing by echo * > /place/some/file.list ? > > Can anyone tell me exactly what this directory is for? This months > Boardwatch in ISP Tech Talk, the author recommends deleting this directory > daily. And this has never been deleted, as far as I know. Or it has been a > very long time. Does the news server read this directory during > news.dailt? Expires have been taking FOREVER lately. I suspect this may be > a reason. (Sorry for the off-topicness, but how to delete the directory is > ontopic. :) ) Don't know if this helps, but the reason I suggested echo'ing * (all files, of course) into a file is to see if you could do this: rm 'cat /place/some/file/list' or something similar; I'm not exactly an expert when it comes to piping stuff from a file. Someone else? Can this be done, and could it work? *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* | FreeBSD; the way computers were meant to be | * "The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is * | that I haven't figured out how to light the middle yet."| * fullermd@futuresouth.com :-} MAtthew Fuller * | http://keystone.westminster.edu/~fullermd | *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*