Deleting large no of files on linux eats up CPU

Posted by Sanjay on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Sanjay
Published on 2010-03-29T09:19:40Z Indexed on 2010/03/29 9:23 UTC
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Filed under:

linux

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files

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delete

I generate more than 50GB of cache files on my RHEL server (and typical file size is 200kb so no of files is huge). When I try to delete these files it takes 8-10 hours.

However, the bigger issue is that the system load goes to critical for these 8-10 hours. Is there anyway where I can keep the system load under control during the deletion.

I tried using

nice -n19 rm -rf *

but that doesn't help in system load.

P.S. I asked the same question on superuser.com but didn't get a good enough answer so trying here.

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