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Quickly clean log files (assuming you don't want them anymore)

Terminal - Quickly clean log files (assuming you don't want them anymore)
for file in `find /var/log/ -type f -size +5000k`; do > $file; done
2009-07-03 17:38:21
User: svg
Functions: file
0
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Quickly clean log files (assuming you don't want them anymore)

you don't need to echo, just a plain redirect is enough to empty the file

Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There are 2 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
for file in `find /var/log/ -type f -size +5000k`; do echo " " > $file; done
2009-07-03 16:26:36
User: jemmille
Functions: echo file
0
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Quickly clean log files (assuming you don't want them anymore)

Empties all files in /var/log over 5000k. Useful if /var goes crazy or if you just haven't cleaned up in a while.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

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What others think

The bash for loop works, but you can do it with less typing with a single find command using find's -exec option:

find /var/log -type f -size +5000k -exec cp /dev/null {} \;

this will invoke cp once for each file, copying /dev/null to it. They syntax of -exec just replaces {} with the name of each file found and runs cp. If you were just deleting those files, you could use the -delete option in place of -exec. See the "ACTIONS" section of the find manpage for more.

Comment by bwoodacre 202 weeks and 3 days ago

Why would you need to use this command when logrotate + cron does it for you already?

Comment by djangofan 74 weeks and 1 day ago

Your point of view

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