What's the best way to delete certain files?

[johncatral]

Hello, guys!

I'm hoping you could guide me on what's the best and possibly quickest way to delete all files in a folder, EXCEPT certain extensions?

To give you a better understanding what I'm trying to do is to remove all unnecessary files, but leave movie files like mp4, mkv, avi, etc. alone. I've been using sabnzbd on my qnap for years now and I want to clean the folder up.

Any apps I can use on Qnap that you could recommend. Terminal commands would possibly be the best, but I'm not sure.

Thanks in advance!

- JOhn

[MrVideo]

Be sure and back up the folder before doing any of this.

This is a very simple way of doing this. Log in as admin via ssh and do the following:

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cd [to the directory containing the files]
mkdir ../temp_dir
mv *.{mkv,mp4,avi,(and whatever extensions)} ../temp_dir
rm *
mv ../temp_dir/* .
rm -r ../temp_dir

The idea is to move all the files you want to keep out of the way when you remove whatever is left in the directory. Then you move the files back and remove the temporary directory.

Keep in mind that files are not actually moved, taking time. Because the files are in the same directory file system, only directory links are changed, which is really fast.

There might be other ideas.

[johncatral]

@MrVideo, thank you for that! I'm assuming that will only the files that are in the current directory and not in any sub-folders, right? I forgot to add that in my original post that I will be dealing with a lot of subfolders. I'll try this out! Thanks!

[MrVideo]

True, it will not traverse sub-directories. That complicates the issue. I'm not saying that it can't be done with a script. How many sub-directories are involved?

BTW, the script that I provided will complain about not being able to delete those sub-directories, which is good.

[johncatral]

Oh, there are a lot of sub-folders, so it looks like my issue may be even more complicated.

[OneCD]

@MrVideo, this might be a job for a recursive `find` with an extension white-list?

[MrVideo]

@MrVideo, this might be a job for a recursive `find` with an extension white-list?

Yep, but the "find" that is included with QNAP is very weak in a lot of things. I'm not sure what it can, or cannot, do.

The builtin find can only do:

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EXPRESSION may consist of:
	-follow		Dereference symbolic links.
	-name PATTERN	File name (leading directories removed) matches PATTERN.
	-print		Print (default and assumed).

	-type X		Filetype matches X (where X is one of: f,d,l,b,c,...)
	-perm PERMS	Permissions match any of (+NNN); all of (-NNN);
			or exactly (NNN)
	-mtime TIME	Modified time is greater than (+N); less than (-N);
			or exactly (N) days

The entware find can do:

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Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|exec] [path...] [expression]

default path is the current directory; default expression is -print
expression may consist of: operators, options, tests, and actions:

operators (decreasing precedence; -and is implicit where no others are given):
      ( EXPR )   ! EXPR   -not EXPR   EXPR1 -a EXPR2   EXPR1 -and EXPR2
      EXPR1 -o EXPR2   EXPR1 -or EXPR2   EXPR1 , EXPR2

positional options (always true): -daystart -follow -regextype

normal options (always true, specified before other expressions):
      -depth --help -maxdepth LEVELS -mindepth LEVELS -mount -noleaf
      --version -xdev -ignore_readdir_race -noignore_readdir_race

tests (N can be +N or -N or N): -amin N -anewer FILE -atime N -cmin N
      -cnewer FILE -ctime N -empty -false -fstype TYPE -gid N -group NAME
      -ilname PATTERN -iname PATTERN -inum N -iwholename PATTERN -iregex PATTERN
      -links N -lname PATTERN -mmin N -mtime N -name PATTERN -newer FILE
      -nouser -nogroup -path PATTERN -perm [-/]MODE -regex PATTERN
      -readable -writable -executable
      -wholename PATTERN -size N[bcwkMG] -true -type [bcdpflsD] -uid N
      -used N -user NAME -xtype [bcdpfls]
      -context CONTEXT


actions: -delete -print0 -printf FORMAT -fprintf FILE FORMAT -print 
      -fprint0 FILE -fprint FILE -ls -fls FILE -prune -quit
      -exec COMMAND ; -exec COMMAND {} + -ok COMMAND ;
      -execdir COMMAND ; -execdir COMMAND {} + -okdir COMMAND ;

[OneCD]

Agree. Might be worth installing GNU find if it makes the job easier.

[johncatral]

Is this the right way of installing Entware via manual install in the Appcenter?

https://github.com/Entware-ng/Entware-n ... n-QNAP-NAS

Thanks!

[OneCD]

Hi John.

If possible, try the standard installer QPKG for Entware-3x instead. It can be found here.

[johncatral]

Awesome! I’ll try that out.

Thank you!

[OneCD]

Oh, and to install GNU find:

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opkg install findutils