Delete all files in a directory using Chef

chef-infra
DonBecker picture DonBecker · Apr 18, 2014 · Viewed 18.8k times · Source

Attempting to delete a non-empty folder:

directory "C:\tempdirectory" do
 action :delete
end

... in Chef I receive: 

Errno::ENOTEMPTY
Directory not empty

Is there a quick way to delete all files in the directory?

Or an argument or flag to allow me to delete non-empty directories?

Answer

Patrick M picture Patrick M · Apr 18, 2014

If I recall correctly, setting the recursive true attribute will force remove non-empty directories.

The docs for the directory LWRP don't describe this behavior, but they do provide this usage example:

directory "/tmp/something" do
  recursive true
  action :delete
end

The docs have since been amended to cryptically say:

recursive
Ruby Types: TrueClass, FalseClass

Create or delete parent directories recursively. For the owner, group, and mode properties, the value of this attribute applies only to the leaf directory.
Default value: false.

They still stop short of saying "recursive true is required to delete non-empty directories. Without this setting, attempting to delete a non-empty directory will fail with the message: Errno::ENOTEMPTY Directory not empty".

Related questions

How to move/copy files locally with Chef

I haven't yet come across a Chef resource that will copy/move files locally. For example, I want to download jetty hightide and unzip it. Once done, copy all the files into a particular folder, like this: # mv /var/tmp/…

Read More
Overriding attributes in the recipe

Let's say I have a default attribute in a cookbook: default.nginx_upstreams = { 'service1' => ['service1.server.com'], 'service2' => ['service2.server.com'], } Then it gets modified and overridden in roles and environments until it finally gets to …

Read More
Which special characters need escaping in a solr query?

Update: I think this question has to do with solr syntax in general, and not Chef in particular. So while I ran into this working with Chef, I presume that anyone working with Solr will also experience this... I'm working …

Read More