Top Hosting Forum

Received "-bash: /usr/bin/find: Argument list too long" message when tried to empty folder with large number of files?

There is a solution and it worked on my centos server! Go to folder you want to empty (delete all files in it).

example: cd /home/folder/folder/

Then paste this command:

find . -name "*" -print | xargs rm

When executed, it told me "rm: cannot remove `.' or `..'"
But i left it running untill comand line appeared again and all files from that folder (/home/folder/folder/) was deleted. (You can confirm this when you do "ls" command after deleting is complete)

Ensure you are in right folder you want to empty and if you are not sure what you are doing, backup the folders first.