Quickly Deleting Files on Linux
Posted by Johan Cyprich on 08 Apr 2009 | Tagged as: How To
Once in a while I need to delete all of the files and folders on my Linux hosting account. This is usually due to updating an application, installing a new web application, or more often installing a clean application in my testing folder.
I would normally use WinSCP, but the problem with deleting files through this is that when there are thousands and files and folders, the process could take a long time. Deleting a Joomla installation, for example, takes more than 30 minutes to do.
A faster way to delete files is to go into your shell account (assuming your web host allows you to have one), and from the root directory, enter the following command:
rm –r folder
This will recursively delete all items in the folder and then delete the folder itself. If the folder is a subdomain, then recreate it using the rmdir command. This process takes seconds as opposed to the method used in WinSCP.
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2 Comments »
on 09 Apr 2009 at 12:28 pm 1.steve.lippert said …
While this is a quick way to remove an entire directory in linux you really must take caution in using it.
I always go with the full path to remove directories
rm -Rf /var/www/vhost/subdomain.cyprich.com
instead of
rm -Rf subdomain.cyprich.com
which may be correct if I am in /var/www/vhosts, but would be wrong if I am in say my home directory.
I have borked a dev system by running rm -Rf in /etc instead of in /tmp like I wanted to do.
It’s a rookie mistake I admit, but something that can also be learned from.
on 09 Apr 2009 at 4:12 pm 2.Johan Cyprich said …
Hi Steve. corykrug on Twitter said you can recursively delete all files and directories with
rm – rf *
Its probably a good idea giving a full path when deleting files just to be safe.