File Grim Reaper is a temporary file manager. It monitors a configured set of directories with independent expiry. The expiry of each folder is contained in the very name of each folder.
File Grim Reaper is meant to be run as a cron job. Each time the program is run it scans the configured directories and takes a snapshot of their content comparing the result with the previous snapshot.
Files get deleted when they have been in the snapshot without being modified for longer than the folder expiry. This insures that if an old file is moved to one of the monitored directory, its unchanged modification time will not trigger its untimely deletion upon the next run.
File Grim Reaper also recursively removes directories left empty after the files it contained are removed.
Real empty directories (a directory which never contained anything) are deleted when their modification date expires.
By default, File Grim Reaper looks for a file named 'FileGrimReaper-paths.txt' in the current working directory. You can also provide the configuration file using the command line option --config 'file name'.
The configuration contains the directory to be monitored, one per line. Empty lines and spaces at start or end of lines are ignored.
The folder names have to respect the following format:
(\w+)__TO_KEEP_(\d+)_(YEAR|MONTH|DAY|HOUR|MINUTE|SECOND)S?$
Exemple of a configuration file on a Windows machine:
O:\____AUTODELETE__TO_KEEP_7_DAYS
O:\____AUTODELETE__TO_KEEP_1_MONTH
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop\TEMP__TO_KEEP_2_HOURS
Exemple of a configuration file on a Unix machine:
/Volumes/Stripe/___AUTODELETE___TO_KEEP_1_DAY
/Volumes/Stripe/___AUTODELETE___TO_KEEP_7_DAYS
/Volumes/Stripe/___AUTODELETE___TO_KEEP_1_MONTH
/Volumes/Stripe/___AUTODELETE___TO_KEEP_6_MONTHS
/Volumes/Small/___AUTODELETE___TO_KEEP_1_MONTH
/Users/graph_local/Desktop/___AUTODELETE___TO_KEEP_2_HOURS
/Users/graph_local/Desktop/___AUTODELETE___TO_KEEP_1_DAY
File Grim Reaper stores the snapshots it takes from each configured path in a directory named "FileGrimReaper-Datas" which is located in the same directory as FileGrimReaper.php. Each file is named after the computer name where the script is run and a sanitized version of the path.
Example:
HV-NODAL2_O-____AUTODELETE__TO_KEEP_7_DAYS.data.serialized
pglmac15_-Volumes-Stripe_PGLMAC15-___AUTODELETE___TO_KEEP_1_MONTH.data.serialized
Additionally if internal errors occur, such as a PHP exception, a file "computer-name_errors.log" will be created in FileGrimReaper.php's directory.
-r, --reap Removes expired files and directories and updates snapshots.
-s, --show Shows what would happen with the --reap command (doesn't
actually remove anything and doesn't update snapshots).
-c, --config Uses the specified configuration file.
-l, --logging Creates log files for each configured directories. The log files
will be stored in a 'Logs' sub-folder in the 'FileGrimReaper-Datas' directory.
The log file will be named in the following way:
COMPUTERNAME_SANITIZED-PATH.log
The log file will be written if and only if something changed
in the monitored folder. The number of new and modified files is given as well
as the full path of every deleted file.
-y, --daylightsavingbug
On Microsoft Windows platforms, on some filesystems (such as
FAT or network shares), there is a "feature" that makes filemtime() report a
different file modification time wether Daylight Saving is active or not.
This option enables the detection of this bug to prevent files
from appearing modified (and thus resetting their expiry) when DLS status
changes.
There is one caveat though: if a file is replaced with a file
whose modification time is exactly one hour apart from the
original file (and older than a day), the file expiry won't be
reset and the file will be deleted sooner than expected.
File Grim Reaper is meant to be run as a cron job.
If you plan using it on several computers it's best to have FileGrimReaper located on a unique place such as on a network volume so you can update it easily and have all your log and snapshot files in one place.
PHP 5.3.8 or superior is required.
In this example we are on Windows XP. FileGrimReaper is located on a remote volume and the last error is logged to a file on this remote volume (if files or directories can't be deleted you'll find their full path in this file).
In a folder "C:\scripts" create a .bat file containing:
C:\php\php.exe K:\Utils\Scripts\FileGrimReaper\FileGrimReaper.php --reap --logging --daylightsavingbug 2>K:\Utils\Scripts\FileGrimReaper\errors\HV-NODAL2_LastError.txt
Then create a shortcut and edit its properties to make it start in a minimized window.
You also need to create a configuration file "FileGrimReaper-paths.txt" (see above for an example).
Finally use Windows' task manager to create a task that will run the shortcut every hour (depending on the expiry of your configured folders).
In this example we are on Mac OSX. FileGrimReaper is located on a remote volume and the last error is logged to a file on this remote volume (if files or directories can't be deleted you'll find their full path in this file).
In a folder "/Volumes/Data/Scrips" create a bash file containing:
#!/bin/bash
cd /Volumes/Small_PgLMAc15/Scripts/FileGrimReaper
/usr/bin/php-5.3.8/php /Volumes/Team_Virtuel/Utils/Scripts/FileGrimReaper/FileGrimReaper.php --reap --logging 2> /Volumes/Team_Virtuel/Utils/Scripts/FileGrimReaper/errors/PGLMAC15_LastError.txt
Then make a file containing:
# The periodic and atrun jobs have moved to launchd jobs
# See /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
#
# minute hour mday month wday who command
0 */1 * * * nice /Volumes/Small_PgLMAc15/Scripts/LauchFileGrimReaper.sh > /dev/null
(this will run the script each hour)
Finally load it using the command "crontab YOURFILE".