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Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 06:26:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: Thomas David Rivers <rivers@dignus.com>
Message-Id: <199710231026.GAA07280@lakes.dignus.com>
To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG, shawn@luke.cpl.net
Subject: Re: deleted huge directory
Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
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> 
> 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.)
> 
>  
> 
> 

 Ha!  Been-there, Done-that!

 You can try this:
	echo *

 [which won't do a sort or stat, but might hang because the shell
runs out of memory.]

 Or, echo 1*
     echo 2*
     echo 3*
     echo 4*

 etc...

 The, if that doesn't work:

    echo 11*
    echo 12*
    echo 13*
    echo 14*
  
    ...

    echo 21*
    echo 22*
 

  - once you've narrowed this down; you can replace the 'echo' lines
 that work with 'rm' lines.

  Then... (phew) you can peck away at it until it's size becomes manageable.


	- Dave Rivers -