How To Install tmpwatch on CentOS 8

tmpwatch is A utility for removing files based on when they were last accessed

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install tmpwatch on CentOS 8.

What is tmpwatch

The tmpwatch utility recursively searches through specified directories and removes files which have not been accessed in a specified period of time. Tmpwatch is normally used to clean up directories which are used for temporarily holding files (for example, /tmp). Tmpwatch ignores symlinks, won’t switch filesystems and only removes empty directories and regular files.

We can use yum or dnf to install tmpwatch on CentOS 8. In this tutorial we discuss both methods but you only need to choose one of method to install tmpwatch.

Install tmpwatch on CentOS 8 Using dnf

Update yum database with dnf using the following command.

sudo dnf makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install tmpwatch using dnf by running the following command:

sudo dnf -y install tmpwatch

Install tmpwatch on CentOS 8 Using yum

Update yum database with yum using the following command.

sudo yum makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install tmpwatch using yum by running the following command:

sudo yum -y install tmpwatch

How To Uninstall tmpwatch on CentOS 8

To uninstall only the tmpwatch package we can use the following command:

sudo dnf remove tmpwatch

tmpwatch Package Contents on CentOS 8

/usr/bin/tmpwatch
/usr/lib/.build-id
/usr/lib/.build-id/d0
/usr/lib/.build-id/d0/fdab8a7f7a81999c188144f6d82821585da60e
/usr/sbin/tmpwatch
/usr/share/doc/tmpwatch
/usr/share/doc/tmpwatch/AUTHORS
/usr/share/doc/tmpwatch/COPYING
/usr/share/doc/tmpwatch/ChangeLog
/usr/share/doc/tmpwatch/NEWS
/usr/share/doc/tmpwatch/README
/usr/share/man/man8/tmpwatch.8.gz

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install tmpwatch on CentOS 8 using yum and dnf.