Efficiently Deleting Large Amounts of Temporary Files Print

Efficiently Deleting Large Amounts of Temporary Files

The /tmp directory can quickly become overloaded with temporary files, such as PHP session files (sess_*). This can degrade system performance and complicate file system management.

Recommended solution

To delete large volumes of these files efficiently, run the following command:

find /tmp -name "sess_*" -type f -print0 | xargs -0rn 20 rm -f

How the command works

• find /tmp -name "sess_*" -type f -print0: searches the /tmp directory for files beginning with sess_. The -print0 flag uses null character separation to safely handle filenames with spaces or special characters.
• xargs -0rn 20 rm -f: reads the null-separated input (-0), processes files in batches of 20 (-n 20), and runs rm -f to force deletion without prompts.

This method is more stable and faster than using a wildcard rm sess_* in heavily populated directories.

Warning

Always double-check the pattern sess_* to avoid accidentally deleting unintended files.