rmlint: The potential to purge

I am behind the power curve today, because of some real-life obligations. I am going to grab something quick and easy so as not to fall behind; things are going to be even busier into the weekend.

This is a snapshot of rmlint in action:

rmlint cruises through your directory tree, and offers to remove files it thinks are duplicates, zero-byte or hollow folders. And as you can see, given enough space, it will take its time to come up with a menu of potential excisions.

I did say “offers,” which is an important distinction. rmlint’s output is a little unexpected: By default it generates a script that will remove suspicious targets, but doesn’t outright eliminate them.

Which is a good thing; it means you have the option to adjust its list, and it also means you take the next step — running the script — with conscious aforethought. You can’t blame rmlint for whacking apart your /usr/lib folder if you told it specifically to do it.

I like rmlint for a number of reasons — it’s rare that I see a system cleaner, it takes the safe route by creating the script, and it has a smidgen of color.

But that’s about all the time I have today; I’ll get deeper into something tomorrow … I promise. 😉

rdfind: Echolocation

I once destroyed — utterly destroyed — a Windows XP installation by playing fast and loose with a utility that sought out duplicate files and arbitrarily removed them.

You can imagine the havoc that caused. I couldn’t tell you the name of the utility now, and it doesn’t really matter except that tinkering with rdfind brought that memory back.

No, I didn’t destroy any Linux installations today, and I daresay that neither Linux nor rdfind would allow me to utterly decimate the system without at least showing some credentials. I get by with a little help from my friends.

It does sound like the author of rdfind may have had similar experiences though, given the explanation on the home page and rdfind’s options for linking files, as well as removing them outright.

I also like that rdfind creates an output file, showing the fruits of its labor and giving you a report on its opinions. Every program should be so polite.

Seeing as rdfind was Ian Munsie’s suggestion, I suppose I should offer one small note of thanks for pushing me in this direction. I do think it’s a step above fdupes, in technical terms.

Now all I need are some duplicate files to thrash. … 😈

findimagedupes: Exactly what it says

I ran past duplicate file searches not long ago with fdupes; here’s one specifically aimed at duplicate images. …

The aptly-named findimagedupes. Hey, that’s what I would name it, if it was my program. 😉

This one has a little history to it, so I’m a little surprised that it took me this long to find it. It’s the story of my life, really. 🙄

As I understand it, findimagedupes scans md5sums and “fingerprints” to find images that are the same, or visually similar.

One thing in particular I liked about it was the option to spawn an image viewer program to check the lists it produced.

I should say that I used the term “visually similar” above, because if I read the results right, I’m getting false positives on some matches on my system.

I stacked the deck with three straightaway copied documents in that folder, but it worries me a little that some of the others listed were not … quite the same.

Try it and see if you’re getting the same results. Not that it would matter much if it was designed to look for similar images, only if it was picking out files that were completely unalike. 😯