Hi all,

One of my users created a recursive directory until the system limit (we're
running Solaris8).
No I'm trying to remove this famous recurisve directory and I'm having each
time an error message : file argument too long
The problem is the same with also mv, find ... commands

Is there anybody having a hint for this issue ?

Thanks in advance and best regards,

Pierre-Yves Thillier
Infineon Technologies

Thillier Pierre-Yves (IFF DCSA IT) wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> One of my users created a recursive directory until the system limit (we're
> running Solaris8).
> No I'm trying to remove this famous recurisve directory and I'm having each
> time an error message : file argument too long
> The problem is the same with also mv, find ... commands
>
> Is there anybody having a hint for this issue ?
>
> Thanks in advance and best regards,
>
> Pierre-Yves Thillier
> Infineon Technologies
>
>

This one was posted a while back (creds to Mark Hittinger), and received
critical acclaim for its elegance. You will need to modify it as it was
originally designed to blow away an Oracle recursive core directory, but
you will get the picture from the script.


>> #! /bin/sh
>> renice 5 $$
>> while [ 1 ] ; do
>> mv core_8286 core_8286.rm
>> if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then exit ; fi
>> mv core_8286.rm/core_8286 .
>> if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then exit ; fi
>> rmdir core_8286.rm
>> if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then exit ; fi
>> done


>> After one pass you have the same directory tree in core_8286 but
with the top level snipped off.
>> It could just grind away in the background until it hits the bottom.

Thanks for the quick answer !!
That worked fine.

Have a nice day,

Pierre-Yves
"Beardy" <beardy@beardy.net> wrote in message
news:K8oWb.2520$Y%6.381445@wards.force9.net...
> Thillier Pierre-Yves (IFF DCSA IT) wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > One of my users created a recursive directory until the system limit
(we're
> > running Solaris8).
> > No I'm trying to remove this famous recurisve directory and I'm having
each
> > time an error message : file argument too long
> > The problem is the same with also mv, find ... commands
> >
> > Is there anybody having a hint for this issue ?
> >
> > Thanks in advance and best regards,
> >
> > Pierre-Yves Thillier
> > Infineon Technologies
> >
> >
>
> This one was posted a while back (creds to Mark Hittinger), and received
> critical acclaim for its elegance. You will need to modify it as it was
> originally designed to blow away an Oracle recursive core directory, but
> you will get the picture from the script.
>
>
> >> #! /bin/sh
> >> renice 5 $$
> >> while [ 1 ] ; do
> >> mv core_8286 core_8286.rm
> >> if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then exit ; fi
> >> mv core_8286.rm/core_8286 .
> >> if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then exit ; fi
> >> rmdir core_8286.rm
> >> if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then exit ; fi
> >> done
>
>
> >> After one pass you have the same directory tree in core_8286 but
> with the top level snipped off.
> >> It could just grind away in the background until it hits the bottom.
>
>

Would "find -type d ... | xargs rmdir" help in this case ?

Thillier Pierre-Yves (IFF DCSA IT) wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> One of my users created a recursive directory until the system limit (we're
> running Solaris8).
> No I'm trying to remove this famous recurisve directory and I'm having each
> time an error message : file argument too long
> The problem is the same with also mv, find ... commands
>
> Is there anybody having a hint for this issue ?
>
> Thanks in advance and best regards,
>
> Pierre-Yves Thillier
> Infineon Technologies
>
>

Thillier Pierre-Yves (IFF DCSA IT) wrote:
> Thanks for the quick answer !!
> That worked fine.
>
> Have a nice day,
>
> Pierre-Yves

Excellent! Glad to be of assistance :-)

In article <c0d9h2$ciq$1@bfos.tucows.com>,
Yura Pismerov <ypismerov@tucows.com> wrote:

> Would "find -type d ... | xargs rmdir" help in this case ?

That has two problems:

1) It will try to delete the parent directories before deleting the
child directories, which will fail because they're not empty. This can
be resolved by using the -d or -depth option, if your version of find
has it, to do a depth-first traversal.

2) It doesn't address the "filename too long" problem at all. The
deeply nested directory will still have a huge name, since find prints
out the full pathname.

You seem to be confusing the OP's problem with the more common problem
of too many arguments on the command line. That's the type of problem
that piping find to xargs solves.

If your version of find has the -execdir option (it's in GNU find), I
think the following might be a solution:

find topdir -depth -type d -execdir rm -r {} \;

--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***

Thanks for correction.
BTW, Solaris find does support depth (at least starting from Solaris 7 -
I have no 2.6 to verify).


Barry Margolin wrote:
> In article <c0d9h2$ciq$1@bfos.tucows.com>,
> Yura Pismerov <ypismerov@tucows.com> wrote:
>
>
>> Would "find -type d ... | xargs rmdir" help in this case ?
>
>
> That has two problems:
>
> 1) It will try to delete the parent directories before deleting the
> child directories, which will fail because they're not empty. This can
> be resolved by using the -d or -depth option, if your version of find
> has it, to do a depth-first traversal.
>
> 2) It doesn't address the "filename too long" problem at all. The
> deeply nested directory will still have a huge name, since find prints
> out the full pathname.
>
> You seem to be confusing the OP's problem with the more common problem
> of too many arguments on the command line. That's the type of problem
> that piping find to xargs solves.
>
> If your version of find has the -execdir option (it's in GNU find), I
> think the following might be a solution:
>
> find topdir -depth -type d -execdir rm -r {} \;
>