Remove a lot of cache files

Question

There are over 1m+ cache files in one directory on a server. I would need to remove them, but of course rm first lists file and then starts to remove them. That cause a high spike in a server CPU load and can cause whole server to break down. Any ideas how to safely remove them without causing any harm?

see http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/37329 and http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/66806 — don_crissti, Nov 05 '16 at 17:20

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 05 '16 at 18:28

2

If you value more cpu usage than speed on the erase, this is a good approach:

find <dir> -type f -exec ionice -c3 rm {} \;

Replace \; with + if you want some more speed (and more cpu).

edited Nov 05 '16 at 18:28

Jeff Schaller

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answered Nov 05 '16 at 18:19

Remove a lot of cache files

1 Answers1