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Date:      Thu, 23 Oct 1997 01:16:35 -0500 (CDT)
From:      "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@futuresouth.com>
To:        Shawn Ramsey <shawn@luke.cpl.net>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: deleted huge directory
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.971023011454.29151C-100000@shell.futuresouth.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.95.971022231126.26455B-100000@luke.cpl.net>

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On Wed, 22 Oct 1997, Shawn Ramsey wrote:

> > > Does anyone have any suggestions for deleting a huge directory? The
> > > direcory is /var/news/spool/control/cancel. The directory is too large to
> > > even do a ls. If I try doing ls, it eats up all the avail. RAM(140+mb) and
> > > hangs. Anyone? I would try a wildcard, but I don't know what the filenames
> > > are. (This is a very large news server, and this directory has never been
> > > touch as far as I know.)
> > 
> > Dear god.
> > If you don't mind, I'll just borrow all that space.....
> > Can you get a file listing by echo * > /place/some/file.list ?
> 
> Can anyone tell me exactly what this directory is for? This months
> Boardwatch in ISP Tech Talk, the author recommends deleting this directory
> daily. And this has never been deleted, as far as I know. Or it has been a
> very long time. Does the news server read this directory during
> news.dailt? Expires have been taking FOREVER lately. I suspect this may be
> a reason. (Sorry for the off-topicness, but how to delete the directory is
> ontopic. :) )

Don't know if this helps, but the reason I suggested echo'ing * (all
files, of course) into a file is to see if you could do this:
rm 'cat /place/some/file/list'
or something similar; I'm not exactly an expert when it comes to piping
stuff from a file.
Someone else?  Can this be done, and could it work?

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|       FreeBSD; the way computers were meant to be       |
* "The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is *
| that I haven't figured out how to light the middle yet."|
*    fullermd@futuresouth.com      :-}  MAtthew Fuller    *
|      http://keystone.westminster.edu/~fullermd          |
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