Rank Old Cleanup Candidates by Size

You have old files in a cleanup path and need to review the largest candidates first without deleting anything.

Command

find /lab/disk-inode-cleanup/var -xdev -type f -mtime +7 -printf '%s %TY-%Tm-%Td %p\n' | sort -nr | head

Before you run this

System impact: Read-only. Can create load on large logs, directories, filesystems, or process tables.

When not to use it: Do not delete the largest old file just because it is large; confirm ownership, retention, and whether a process still needs it.

Expected output

A largest-first list of old files with byte counts, dates, and paths.

System impact

Read-only, can be slow. Nothing changes. The command prints old files with byte sizes and sorts the candidates largest first.

May require elevated permissions on protected paths or service-owned files.

Scope this to the smallest useful path or service on busy systems.

When to use it

Use when cleanup pressure is urgent and you need to focus review on candidates that would actually reclaim space.

When not to use it

Do not delete the largest old file just because it is large; confirm ownership, retention, and whether a process still needs it.

Recovery / rollback

No undo needed because this command only prints candidate files.

Explanation-only example

Illustrated output, not a live lab run

This example is intentionally illustrative. It shows the command shape without killing real processes or changing your machine.

demo@lab:~$

$ find /work/disk-inode-cleanup/var -xdev -type f -mtime +7 -printf '%s %TY-%Tm-%Td %p\n' | sort -nr | head

78643200 2026-06-01 /work/disk-inode-cleanup/var/tmp/uploads/old-export.tar

$ find /work/disk-inode-cleanup/var -xdev -type f -mtime +7 -printf '%10s %TY-%Tm-%Td %p\n' | sort -nr | awk '{printf "%.1f MB %s %s\n", $1/1024/1024, $2, $3}'

75.0 MB 2026-06-01 /work/disk-inode-cleanup/var/tmp/uploads/old-export.tar

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