[ubuntu] Recursive command to remove dirs & files

[bc.haynes]

I have a file system that I need to remove part of it. I got into it, and there are myriad folders and files. I tried

sudo rmdir -R <foldername>

and evidently the -R has been dropped from rmdir (I guess it is too dangerous for some to use).

How can I remove the current folder and all child folders and files without having to spend all night cd.ing and rmdir.ing and rm.ing files?

A response will save me several hours work.

Thanks - Ben

[lisati]

Thread moved to General Help.

Forum Feedback and Help is for reporting technical problems with the website here (i.e. broken features), or ask questions pertaining to forum features.

[bc.haynes]

Thank you lisati I was going to ask y'all to move it to General because I realised it was in the wrong place. You moved it without my asking. Thank you, Ben

[steeldriver]

The rmdir command only removes empty directories - to remove non-empty dirs you need to use rm

sudo rm -rf <foldername>

BE ABSOLUTELY SURE YOU TYPE THE FOLDERNAME CORRECTLY - THERE IS NO UNDO. Be especially careful if the foldername contains special characters or spaces.

[bc.haynes]

Thank you, steeldriver, that's twice you have saved me some time & toil.

Thanks for the heads-up warning.

[papibe]

EDIT: sorry late response.

Hi bc.haynes.

WARNING: there's no comeback if this you ran this on the wrong directory:

rm -rf foldername

-r for recursive
-f for force, no questions asked.

Hope it helps. Let us know how it goes.
Regards.

[bc.haynes]

This is how it went"

sent 138.91K bytes  received 12.73K bytes  101.10K bytes/sec
total size is 172.13M  speedup is 1135.08 (DRY RUN)
rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1070) [sender=3.0.9]

Code 23 is "Partial transfer due to error"

rsync -vaxzPXhn /Source/ /Destination

Was what I used.

What did I do wrong?

[papibe]

Were you able to remove recursively the directory you wanted to delete?

How the 'rsync' command is related to your original concern? If it's not, opening another thread for that specific problem would get more attention to it.

Regards.

[bc.haynes]

I did a -vv (very verbose) Dry Run and got this:

total: matches=0  hash_hits=0  false_alarms=0 data=0

sent 135.68K bytes  received 12.83K bytes  99.00K bytes/sec
total size is 171.68M  speedup is 1156.05 (DRY RUN)
rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1070) [sender=3.0.9]
ben@MissionControl:~$

I removed an old rsnapshoy dir & all children. Then I used the /snapshot directory to store rsync info on a USB pendrive.

[bc.haynes]

@ papibe - I shall do as you suggest and start a new thread about this.