Windows shares using samba: problems with blank spaces.

Our network has a window machine that needs to have disk space cleaned
up. We are trying to delete files in specific folders that are more
than 3 months old. We are trying to run a script on a linux box that
will find all files older than three months old on the win box
(through a samba share). However, samba returns error messages on the
windows files/folders that have blank spaces in the name (ex: My
Documents).

Does anyone have a good solution to this problem?

Your help is much appreciated.

-Mike Barba

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 11:11:30 -0700, Mike Barba wrote:
> Our network has a window machine that needs to have disk space cleaned
> up. We are trying to delete files in specific folders that are more
> than 3 months old. We are trying to run a script on a linux box that
> will find all files older than three months old on the win box
> (through a samba share). However, samba returns error messages on the
> windows files/folders that have blank spaces in the name (ex: My
> Documents).

That's an old one, that has been covered in other threads. Use Google
and/or "man find" and "man xargs". The key is to use the GNU switches that
pass on file names intact, without breaking them at every white space.

BTW, it is not samba that is returning the errors. It is your file delete
application (which is probably being fed from some shell script?) which is
getting upset when it tries to use a "word" (only part of a file name with
which space) as a file name. No such file exists, but samba is still happy.

--
Juhan Leemet
Logicognosis, Inc.

Mike Barba wrote:

> Our network has a window machine that needs to have disk space cleaned
> up. We are trying to delete files in specific folders that are more
> than 3 months old. We are trying to run a script on a linux box that
> will find all files older than three months old on the win box
> (through a samba share). However, samba returns error messages on the
> windows files/folders that have blank spaces in the name (ex: My
> Documents).
>
> Does anyone have a good solution to this problem?
>
> Your help is much appreciated.
>
> -Mike Barba


The best way I have found to deal with file names that have spaces is to set
the variable IFS. Something like this:

#!/bin/bash

IFS=$'\t\n'

for i in $( ls /samba )
do
echo $i #this will echo the file names with spaces.
done

IFS=null