James B. Byrne wrote: > On Mon, January 25, 2010 10:31, Robert Nichols wrote: > \ >> Now if the "{}" string appears more than once then the command line >> contains that path more than once, but it is essentially impossible >> to exceed the kernel's MAX_ARG_PAGES this way. >> >> The only issue with using "-exec command {} ;" for a huge number of >> files is one of performance. If there are 100,000 matched files, >> the command will be invoked 100,000 times. >> >> -- >> Bob Nichols RNichols42@xxxxxxxxxxx >> > > Since the OP reported that the command he used: > > find -name "*.access*" -mtime +2 -exec rm {} \; > > in fact failed, one may infer that more than performance is at issue. > > The OP's problem lies not with the -exec construction but with the > unstated, but nonetheless present, './' of his find invocation. > Therefore he begins a recursive descent into that directory tree. > Since the depth of that tree is not given us, nor its contents, we > may only infer that there must be some number of files therein which > are causing the MAXPAGES limit to be exceeded before the recursion > returns. Find just emits the filenames as encountered, so _no_ number of files should be able to cause an error. An infinitely deep directory tree might, or recursively linked directories, but only after a considerable amount of time and churning to exhaust the machine's real and virtual memory. > I deduce that he could provide the -prune option or the -maxdepth= 0 > option to avoid this recursion instead. I have not tried either but > I understand that one, or both, should work. I'd say it is more likely that the command that resulted in an error wasn't exactly what was posted or there is a filesystem problem. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos