tidy

The tidy function is used to delete (remove permanently) unwanted files from a system. It is useful for tidying up in /tmp or cleaning out core files from users' home directories. The form of an entry is:

tidy:

  class::

      /directory 
                       pattern=wildcard 
                       recurse=number/inf 
                       age=days 
                       size=number/empty
                       type=ctime/mtime/atime
                       dirlinks=keep/tidy/delete
                       rmdirs=true/false/all/sub
                       links=stop/keep/traverse/tidy

                       define=classlist
                       elsedefine=classlist

                       syslog=true/on/false/off
                       inform=true/on/false/off

                       filter=filter alias
                       include=pattern
                       exclude=pattern

Note that, each of the options below can be written in either upper or lower case and abbreviated by any unique abbreviation.

/directory

This is the directory name to directories which mark the start of a search for files matching certain wildcards. The wildcard home may be used instead of an explicit directory, in which case cfengine iterates over all home directories. It is compulsory to specify a directory.

pattern=wildcard

A wildcard or filename to match the files you wish to be deleted. The pattern may contain the special symbols `?' which matches a single character and `*' which matches any number of characters as in the shell.

recurse=number/inf

This specifier tells cfengine whether or not to recurse into subdirectories. If the value is zero, only the named file or directory is affected. If the value is 1, it will open at most one level of subdirectory and affect the files within this scope. If the value is inf then cfengine opens all subdirectories and files beginning from the specified filename. See section Recursion.

age=days

The age of a file in days represents a minimum access time elapsed before the file will be deleted. In other word a file will be deleted if it has not been accessed for days days.

links=stop/traverse/tidy

Normally cfengine does not descend into subdirectories which are pointed to by symbolic links. If you wish to force it to do so (without using the -l command line option) you may give this option the value true, or traverse, or follow. To specify no recursion you set the value false or stop. Note that the value set here in the cfengine program always overrides the value set by the -l command line option, so you can protect certain actions from this command line option by specifying a negative value here. If you specify no value here, the behaviour is determined by what you specify on the command line. The value links=tidy has the same effect as the `-L' command line option except that here it may be specified per item rather than globally. Setting this value causes links which point to non-existent files to be deleted. This feature will not work on commands with the `home' wildcard feature. If you want to clean up old links you should either user a files command or the command line option which sets the tidy feature globally.

size=number/empty

The value of this parameter decides the size of files to be deleted. Files larger than this value will be deleted if they also are older than the time specified in age. The default size is zero so that any file which gets matched by another critereon is deleted. However, if you want to single out only totally empty files, the empty may be used. With this option only empty files, nevery files with anything in them, will be deleted, if older than age. By default, the filesizes are in kilobytes, but kilobytes and megabytes may also be specified by appending b,k,m to the numbers. Only the first character after the number is significant so you may write the numbers however it might be convenient, e.g. 14k, 14kB, 14kilobytes, the same as for disable.

type=ctime/mtime/atime

This value is used to set the type of time comparison made using age. The default is to compare access times (atime) or the last time the file was read. A comparison by modification time (mtime) uses the last time the contents of the file was changed. The ctime parameter is the last time the contents, owner or permissions of the file were changed.

dirlinks=keep/tidy/delete

This value is used to decide whether cfengine will delete links which point to directories. The default value is to keep the links. Note that, if the travlinks option is switched on, cfengine will not tidy or delete links which point to directories, instead it follows them into the subdirectory. This is a supplement to the rmdirs option. You need both to make links to directories disappear.

rmdirs=true/false/all/sub

Normally cfengine will not delete directories. If this option is set to `true' then cfengine will delete any directories which are empty. Non-empty directories will not be touched and no message will be given unless in verbose mode. Note that this option overrides the above option dirlinks, so that even links which point to empty directories will be removed. If this is set to `sub' then the topmost directory will not be removed, only sub-directories.

define=classlist

The colon, comma or dot separated list of classes becomes defined if any file matching the specified pattern is deleted.

Take a look at the following example:

tidy:

   AllHomeServers::

       home     pattern=core   R=inf age=0
       home     pattern=*~     R=inf age=7
       home     pattern=#*     R=inf age=30

   any::

       /tmp/    pat=*            R=inf   age=1
       /        pat=core         R=2     age=0
       /etc     pat=hosts.equiv  r=0     age=0

In the first example, all hosts in the group AllHomeServers iterate a search over all user home directories looking for `core' files (older than zero days) and emacs backup files `*~', `#*' older than seven days.

The default values for these options are the empty string for the wildcard pattern, zero for the recursion and a specification of the age is compulsory.

When cfengine tidies users' home directories, it keeps a log of all the files it deletes each time it is run. This means that, in case of accidents, the user can see that the file has been deleted and restore it from backup. The log file is called .cfengine.rm and it is placed in the home directory of each user. The file is owned by root, but is readable to the user concerned.

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