Why does purge not delete files?

Help and Support
1

The command below does not appear to support the deletion of all files on a remote.

rclone lsf dropbox: | xargs -d'\n' -i rclone purge dropbox:{}

It results in the following error message.

Failed to create file system for "dropbox:{filename}.txt": is a file not a directory

My understanding of the purge command is that is deletes all files and directories at a remote.

2

The command is expecting a directory not a file as noted in the page you linked :slight_smile:

If you want to delete a file, you'd just use delete as purge is for directories and all their contents.

3

Isn't the remote considered to be the root directory so shouldn't it delete files and directories with their contents?

4

You mean if you run:

rclone purge dropbox:

?

That would delete your entire dropbox files.

5

Yes and the command rclone lsf dropbox: | xargs -d'\n' -i rclone purge dropbox:{} is intended to delete all contents i.e. rclone purge dropbox:

6

rclone lsf lists files and you can see by the error message, you are trying to delete a file not a directory.

7

rclone lsf lists files and directories and given I'm parsing the list with xargs, shouldn't it be purge it?

8

Assuming your parse list was doing what you expected, but it's catching a file too:

felix@gemini:/opt/rclone$ rclone lsf GD: | xargs -d'\n' -i rclone lsf GD:{}
191qpocr6dhlo35vn2gk2h8gf4/
95tj3q4gj5ban13ppu0kisguco
d7pe9pia5d9a0tud31p8lkdpi0
fn0jbidpl7cqq9so46diq346so
smu5ej34ujbdoip1cm3mlk92q4/
tnvepu36qiohcun8v84ddhsam0/
rclone.log


felix@gemini:/opt/rclone$ rclone lsf GD:
Wednesday-2019-11-06/
crypt/
rclone.log

The purge is giving you an error message it's trying to delete a file so it's best to step back and see why the message is coming.

9

Yes, I am expecting it to list files so that they can be purged at the same time.

rclone lsf dropbox:
crypt/
testfile.txt

rclone lsf dropbox: | xargs -d'\n' -i rclone lsf dropbox:{}
bv21aq86kfd39llpd4dctdq5gk/
testfile.txt

rclone lsf dropbox: | xargs -d'\n' -i rclone purge dropbox:{}
Failed to create file system for "dropbox:testfile.txt": is a file not a directory

10

You can't use purge on files as it's only for directories. You'd have to use delete.

That's why the error message tells you it's a file and not a directory.

11

Is there a way to combine these as a single command i.e purge and delete?

12

If you add --dirs-only this will stop giving that error, so

rclone lsf --dirs-only dropbox: | xargs -d'\n' -i rclone purge dropbox:{}

This will leave files in the root directory only which you can delete with

rclone delete dropbox:
13

Thanks @ncw. Does rclone delete remote:path support redirects?

For example, would rclone delete dropbox:<filelist be allowed?

14

You need to use the --files-from flag to have a list of paths. These need to be relative to the root

https://rclone.org/filtering/#files-from-read-list-of-source-file-names

15

Thanks @ncw. I did attempt that however it returns an error. See below.

rclone deletefile --dry-run --files-from filelist.txt dropbox:

2020/01/19 05:59:02 ERROR : Attempt 1/3 failed with 1 errors and: dropbox: is a directory or doesn't exist
2020/01/19 05:59:02 ERROR : Attempt 2/3 failed with 1 errors and: dropbox: is a directory or doesn't exist
2020/01/19 05:59:02 ERROR : Attempt 3/3 failed with 1 errors and: dropbox: is a directory or doesn't exist
2020/01/19 05:59:02 Failed to deletefile: dropbox: is a directory or doesn't exist

16

What are the contents of the filelist.txt?

17

@Animosity022 - A list of files with new line characters.
For example;
file1.txt
file2.docx
file3.html

18

You want rclone delete instead of rclone deletefile - that should work.

19

@ncw, thanks. I'm looking at ways to recursively deleted selected files and hence the sourcing it from a file as opposed to a complete deletion using rclone delete.

20

I meant use rclone delete --files-from .... - that should work.