Delete files older then x days, from the day when they moved into random folder

Question

I run Ubuntu 14.04 as file server for windows clients. Clients have mapped network shared folder to work with. When they delete files from that folder, files goes to ".recycle". I wanted to delete files older then x days. I used autotrash command:

autotrash -d 30 -T /home/etc/.recycle 

but it tells me that .recycle doesn't contain info file:

Can not find trash information directory. Make sure you have at least GNOME 2.24

I was looking at: /home/etc/.recycle/info

Latest Gnome is installed and result are same. I understand that app can't read info when files moved into .recycle. I can use command: find /path/to/files* -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \; but when files move into .recycle they keep last modification date, not date when they move into folder.

Can I create info file? Is there any solution how can I delete files older then x days from a day when files moved into some folder?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can set the following script to be ran every X days (using cron):

#!/bin/bash

cd /home/etc/recycle_old           #Deletes old trash
rm -r ./*

cd /home/etc
mv -r ./recycle ./recycle_old      #Moves new trash to "old"-folder

It works like this:

1. There are 2 folders, recycle (which is already given) for the "recent" deleted files, and recycle_old for the "old" files.

2. Every X days all the content from recycle_old is deleted and replaced with the "recent" content from recycle

If you want to delete files older than a month, simply move the script to /etc/cron.monthly. If you want something more specific, check out how to set a cronjob.