Argument list too long? Deleting the file or directory using its inode number
We've noticed that sometimes a file or directory has a really big size due to which removing it is not possible
and you get the message below:-
Argument list too long \*
This issue certainly happens with everyone and especially with the folder "Session", where all the sessions of the server in a directory are kept. Recently I've faced this issue on an Linux server where the user stores the server's sessions files at the location below:-
[[email protected]]# pwd
/var/lib/sessions
[[email protected] lib]# cd /var/lib/
[[email protected] lib]# ls -al
drwxrwxrwx. 4 root root 32875698 Nov 22 15:20 session
And I tried every possible way to remove the files inside it with the following commands:-
rm -rf session/* (remove all files inside the session directory)
find session/ -type f -name "*.sess" -exec rm {} ; (removing files whose names end as .sess)
find session/* -mtime +50 -exec rm {} \; (removing files 50 days old)
But all give the same output as below after 1 hour:-
Argument list too long \*
At last, I tried the way which did remove the directory very quickly for me. I used the help of its inode number.
Step 1: Check the inode number of the directory using the command below:-
[[email protected] lib]# ls -li
1179686 drwxrwxrwx. 4 root root 32875698 Nov 22 15:20 session
Above the first number, i.e. 1179686, is the inode of the directory session. Now remove the directory using the inode number with the command below:-
[[email protected] lib]# find . -inum 1179686 -exec rm -rf {} \;
"No such file or directory."
And that's it! The directory will be removed and after a few seconds you'll get the message as above. That's all!
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