Remove hidden directory linux

Linux Windows Install Setup Configuration Project

Using Linux rm command to delete, remove hidden files and folder — Basic Linux Command.

Step by step example to delete or remove hidden files, folder or directory on Linux Fedora system using rm command.

Using Linux rm command on the bash shell command prompt to delete or remove file, hidden file, folder, hidden folder and meta character filename and folder name on Linux fedora core with example. This article show the step by step guide on delete file or delete folder on Linux system, make sure that the that you understand the rm command before you execute them.

Linux command name: rm

The Linux ‘rm’ command is used to remove or to delete file and directory.

‘file’ disk file (external command) and alias to rm=’rm -i’.

[root@fedora ~]# type -t rm

alias mc=’. /usr/share/mc/bin/mc-wrapper.sh’

alias which=’alias | /usr/bin/which —tty-only —read-alias —show-dot —show-tilde’

[root@fedora ~]# type -t /bin/rm

How to remove or delete a file?

Remove file from or delete file from Fedora system.

[root@fedora /]# rm install.log

rm: remove regular file `install.log’? y

The command above remove/delete the file called » install.log «. Use ls command to confirm the removal/deletion.

How to remove or delete several file?

Remove more that one file in one time.

[root@fedora /]# rm install.log kambing.log secure1.log config.doc passwd

rm: remove regular empty file `install.log’? y

rm: remove regular empty file `kambing.log’? y

rm: remove regular empty file `secure1.log’? y

rm: remove regular empty file `config.doc’? y

rm: remove regular empty file `passwd’? y

rm command also can be used to remove or delete the several file at once, in this example five files ( install.log , kambing.log , secure1.log , config.doc , passwd ) is deleted at one go.

How to remove or delete files that use metacharacter (character that mean something to the shell) as file name?

If you have file or folder name that use metacharacter or characters that mean something to shell, you have to tell the shell prompt so that the shell could interpreted that you want to remove files. Below is some example to remove the metacharacter files:

[root@fedora /]# rm -r ./ *important-file*

rm: remove directory `./*important-file*’? y

[root@fedora /]# rm — -not-important*

rm: remove regular file `-not-important*’? y

[root@fedora /]# rm ‘ happy rock hacking.mp3 ‘

rm: remove regular file `happy rock hacking.mp3′? y

To remove/delete the file that contains a space or character which is used by the shell, in this example;

*important-file* The filename contain ( * )

-not-important* The filename contain ( — ) in the beginning and ( * )

happy rock hacking.mp3 The file name use space

Put a single quotes around them or force it using the current directory sign ( ./ ) or used rm — option.

How to remove or delete all files in current directory?

The example below show the rm command use to delete all file in the current directory.

[root@linux hack]# rm ./*

rm: remove regular file `./install.log.syslog’? y

rm: remove regular file `./#interface#’? y

rm: remove regular file `./izes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)’? y

The rm command above will remove or delete all file except the hidden files in that current directory.

How to remove or delete a directory?

To remove the directory just issue the rm command with the directory name, if the directory is not empty you may get the same massage bellow:

[root@fedora /]# rm fedora/

rm: cannot remove directory `fedora/’: Is a directory

If you know that the directory that you want delete (remove) is not empty and you are sure that you want to remove the directory and all of its contents; issue the rm command with the -r option:

[root@fedora /]# rm -r fedora/

rm: descend into directory `fedora/’? y

rm: remove regular empty file `fedora//passwd.kambing’? y

rm: remove regular empty file `fedora//.exploits’? y

rm: remove regular empty file `fedora//.labu’? y

rm: remove regular empty file `fedora//passwd.log’? y

rm: remove regular empty file `fedora//kambing.log’? y

rm: remove regular empty file `fedora//secure1.log’? y

rm: remove regular empty file `fedora//.SELinux’? y

rm: remove regular empty file `fedora//install.log’? y

rm: remove regular empty file `fedora//config.doc’? y

rm: remove directory `fedora/’? y

The rm command above with –r (recursive) option is to remove or delete the fedora directory and all files and directory that contain in the directory that you want to remove.

How to remove or delete everything in current directory without warning?

Remove all files without any warning from the system ( no message output to the screen).

The rm command above with –rf (recursively and remove or delete write-protected file without prompting) option will remove or delete everything in the current directory without any warning.

WARNING : “ rm –rf * ’ command will remove or / delete everything in current directory except hidden file or directory in that current directory. Make sure that you not in the root directory ( / ) before you issue the command or you could end up with empty and broken Linux box. Be careful, rm command can be a dangerous tool if misused.

How to remove or delete all hidden file or directory without warning?

Remove all file and directory without any output to the screen,

With the option –rf and the use » . * » will remove/delete all hidden files/directory. The initial » . » indicates a ‘hidden’ file and the » ?? » match at least two characters to exclude the parent-directory which is » .. » and to remove or delete everything the » * » will match all number or characters that used for files or directory name.

How to remove or delete file base on (use) its inode / index number?

The example below show the step to delete or remove the file base on the inode number.

Issue the ls command with the -i option to get the inode number for the file.

245243 tat — display file or filesystem status

245274 timate file space usage

245276 ystem disk space usage

Using the find command to find inode number for the file and then pass to the rm command to delete the file base on their inode number.

[root@fedora /]# find . -inum 245243 -exec rm –i <> \;

rm: remove regular file `./tat — display file or filesystem status’? y

Verify to make sure that the file have been remove by using ls command.

From the example above, the ‘ls –i’ command is used to get the inode number of file or directory then the find command used to search for inode number » 245243 » then give the inode number to rm command to remove or delete the file base on the inode number given..

The following are some of the flags and arguments that can be used with the rm command:

-d, —directory unlink FILE, even if it is a non-empty directory

(super-user only; this works only if your system

supports `unlink’ for nonempty directories)

-f, —force ignore nonexistent files, never prompt

-i, —interactive prompt before any removal

—no-preserve-root do not treat `/’ specially (the default)

—preserve-root fail to operate recursively on `/’

-r, -R, —recursive remove the contents of directories recursively

-v, —verbose explain what is being done

—help display this help and exit

—version output version information and exit

Note: if you use rm to remove a file, it is possible to recover the contents of that file. If you want more assurance that the contents are truly unrecoverable, consider using shred.

Note:- On Fedora Core using bash shell, the rm command is alias to rm=’rm -i’. The rm is the command to remove files or folder in Linux system but there is no unrm or undelete or unremove command on Linux operating system. So be very careful on what you wish to remove 🙂

Warning: The rm command can do many harm thing to your system, make sure that you double check before executing the rm command.

stat — display file or filesystem status

Need help or need more information use:

Step-by-step how to procedure above tested on:

Operating System: GNU/Linux Fedora Core 4

Kernel Release: 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4

Kernel Version: #1 Thu Jun 2 22:55:56 EDT 2005

Machine Hardware: i686

Machine Processor: i686

Hardware Platform: i386

Shell: GNU bash, version 3.00.16(1)-release (i386-redhat-linux-gnu)

Installation Type: Full Installation (Custom)

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Hidden Files&Directories in user’s home directory [closed]

Then it shows me large number of hidden files and directories in my user’s directory. Which of them I am allowed to remove? Which ones are necessary on my system? How can I realize it?

Why do you want to remove your .files ? Each application you use will have a config file. vim might have .vimrc and .gvimrc and so.

You would be better off asking about specific files. You should not delete any dot (hidden) files unless you understand what they are for.

3 Answers 3

As @mikeserv has already said, you are generally allowed to remove any files you want in your home directory. If you have sufficient privileges you can delete files in another user’s home directory, but as we will see this may not be a very nice thing to in someone else’s home directory. None of these files are necessary for your system to function, you at least have to become root to break the system.

However, the majority of these files contain settings or other data that the program uses when run as that user. Removing these may significantly change the way the program looks/feels for that user and may even cause data loss. Here are some of the things that I have in the hidden files/directories under home:

• Settings for my desktop environment. If these get removed any customisations made to it, like walllpaper, screensaver, shortcut keys and taskbar/menu changes would all be restored to default next time the user logs in.
• Web browser related data. Some of this will be bookmarks, browsing history etc which might be important. The bulk of the data will be the cache which contains downloaded web data (images etc). This would just be re-downloaded next time the page is visited, so generally no problem removing.
• The .wine directory. This is the default location for the entire wine drive. If this removed, so would all software that the user has installed under wine!
• The .cabal directory, this another example of a hidden directory where user software is stored. These are Haskell source packages installed by cabal .
• Configuration files for various command line programs that I use, eg .bashrc , inputrc , .vimrc , .tmux.conf . Over the years many users will build up a substantial array of various settings/tweaks that help their workflow. I you removed mine that would be an incitement to violence! (well, not really, I would restore from a backup or just re-add stuff as I needed it).

Many programs will look for one or more of these files when it runs and it will create what it doesn’t find. If it is a settings file, the newly created one will just have default settings. Any change made to the program’s settings through its own interface will likely be stored in one of these. If cached data is removed, this will generally slow things down somewhere along the line as re-creating will take time (generally the reason for storing it in the first place).

Often it is difficult to find out what files belong to what program. The files will also not be removed when the program is uninstalled, so it is easy to collect ones that you don’t need. If you want to remove some you could try to identify one that you don’t need (eg if you remove a browser, the locating and removing its cache files could free up a lot of space). Either that or just identify what you want to keep and remove the rest — sometimes a clear out can be a good idea.

What may cause unexpected results is removing files like .bashrc and .profile , even if they have not been changed. The system will copy default versions of these files from /etc/skel when the user is created rather than them created by bash when it is run for the first time. If you accidentally delete one of these you can always restore it from /etc/skel (you can do ls -a /etc/skel to see what is there).

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