AIX Clear contents of files larger than 100 MB

Question

I am looking for a command for clearing all files in a directory that has become more than 100 MB. I am using an AIX box and it is generating logs that are filling the space quickly. I do not wish to delete the files. Just want to clear the contents.

What is 100 MB? The files? Or is the size of the directory itself 100 MB? What do you mean with "clear the contents"? If you truncate the files to 0 bytes, would that be acceptable? Why not delete them instead? Or compress them? — fork2execve, Mar 16 '15 at 21:14
Compressing is a good option. I shall explore that. I cannot delete as once deleted the system cannot create the file. — Sandeep, Mar 17 '15 at 11:50
Depending upon which application is creating the log files, there may be an application specific solution such as rotatelogs or similar. — pedz, Mar 17 '15 at 16:25

Walter A · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-17T21:16:48.067

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When the progs don't keep a file handle open, you can use

find yourLogDir -type f -size +100M -exec cp /dev/null {} \;

Edit, see comments:
When the M flag is not supported on your system, enter a long number.

edited Mar 17 '15 at 21:16

answered Mar 16 '15 at 19:50

Walter A

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I tested this a little bit on AIX 6.1. The 100M syntax I believe is not really working. Its probably safer to put +104857600 (or whatever size you want). It seems to be more reliable / portable. – pedz Mar 17 '15 at 16:24
@pedz Tx. I do not have a AIX at home, so I could not verify my solution. I thought Sandeep would understand when the M syntax wasn't supported. And he did. – Walter A Mar 17 '15 at 21:15

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 18 '15 at 03:36

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You can use the following command:

find LogDir -type f -size +104857600c -exec cp /dev/null {} \;

The 'c' after 104857600 indicates that the number is in bytes

answered Apr 18 '15 at 03:36

jgruiz

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score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 02 '15 at 09:50

I did some debugging on @WalterA's answer on my AIX machine. It looks like we have to change the provided command a bit:

find yourLogDir -type f -size +(multiple of 512 Bytes) -exec cp {} /dev/null \;

For example, if you want to copy a log file with a size of more than 100 MB, just execute the below command with proper directory path:

find yourLogDir -type f -size +204800 -exec cp {} <dir path to copy> \;

AIX Clear contents of files larger than 100 MB

3 Answers3