Fileprune

Prune a file set according to a given age distribution

Fileprune will delete files from the specified set targeting a given distribution of the files within time as well as size, number, and age constraints. Its main purpose is to keep a set of daily-created backup files in manageable size, while still providing reasonable access to older versions. Specifying a size, file number, or age constraint will simply remove files starting from the oldest, until the constraint is met. The distribution specification exponential, Gaussian normal, or Fibonacci provides finer control of the files to delete, allowing the retention of recent copies and the increasingly aggressive pruning of the older files. The retention schedule specifies the age intervals for which files will be retained. As an example, an exponential retention schedule for 10 files with a base of 2 will be

1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024

The above schedule specifies that for the interval of 65 to 128 days there should be at least one retained file unless constraints and options override this setting.