Only keep `n` newest files in a directory

See here for the original answer.

One way to do this is with the following one-liner, ran from the directory where the logs are located:

ls -t | head -n -8 | xargs --no-run-if-empty rm

Explanation:

• ls -t - lists all the files in order from youngest to oldest
• head -n -8 - gets all the files except the first 8
• xargs --no-run-if-empty rm - deletes the selected files if there are any, preventing errors if you ever have fewer than 8 logs

If you want to set this up to run automatically every day, giving you peace of mind in case your server is offline on the 7th day of a cycle and misses the one week mark, run crontab -e and add the following to your jobs:

0 0 * * * cd yourDirNameHere && ls -t | head -n -8 | xargs --no-run-if-empty rm

Then the log cleaner will be ran every night at midnight.

---

Tags

1. bash (Private)
2. linux (Private)
3. stack-overflow (Private)
4. answer (Private)