ProcessBuilder giving a "File not found" exception when the file does exist

Question

Working on an application that will run on a Linux web server to delete logs from a certain directory, however I keep getting a FileNotFound exception.

Here is the code:

public static void deleteLOG() {
    try {
        ProcessBuilder probuilder = new ProcessBuilder("find /home/root/multicraft/servers/ -name '*.log' -delete");
        probuilder.start();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

And the exception

java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "find . -name '*CoreData*' -delete" (in directory "/home/root/multicraft/servers"): error=2, No such file or directory
        at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(Unknown Source)
        at com.mcprohosting.com.nodecleanup.Preprocess.deleteCoreData(Preprocess.java:23)
        at com.mcprohosting.com.nodecleanup.handlers.CleanupHandler.executeCleanup(CleanupHandler.java:36)
        at com.mcprohosting.com.main.NodeCleaner.init(NodeCleaner.java:29)
        at com.mcprohosting.com.main.NodeCleaner.main(NodeCleaner.java:25)
Caused by: java.io.IOException: error=2, No such file or directory
        at java.lang.UNIXProcess.forkAndExec(Native Method)
        at java.lang.UNIXProcess.<init>(Unknown Source)
        at java.lang.ProcessImpl.start(Unknown Source)
        ... 5 more

However the command cd /home/root/multicraft/servers works perfectly fine.

I've also tried:

    ProcessBuilder probuilder = new ProcessBuilder("find . -name '*Backup*' -delete");
    probuilder.directory(new File("/home/root/multicraft/servers/"));
    probuilder.start();

score 18 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 08 '13 at 04:46

18

The ProcessBuilder constructor receives multiple strings - either as a List<String> or as a variable number of arguments, each of type String:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/ProcessBuilder.html#ProcessBuilder(java.util.List) http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/ProcessBuilder.html#ProcessBuilder(java.lang.String...)

You're experiencing difficulties because you passed the entire command as one string, causing the JVM to look for a program called "find /home/root/multicraft/servers/ -name '*.log' -delete", not find.

You'll have to separate the long command into parts. Such as:

ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder("find", ".", "-name", "'*CoreData*"...);

answered Feb 08 '13 at 04:46

Isaac

16,458
5
57
81

Thanks for the answer, no more errors, but it's not deleting any of the files. For more information the command should usually take a few seconds to complete, but there is no pause during this lines execution. For your reference here is the updated code line - "find", "/home/root/multicraft/servers/", "-name", "'*CoreData*", "-delete" – Matthew Salsamendi Feb 08 '13 at 05:01
Do you have files named `CoreData` there? I can see that you dropped the `*` from the beginning and the end of the pattern. – Isaac Feb 08 '13 at 05:18

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 08 '13 at 04:51

    try {
        ProcessBuilder probuilder = new ProcessBuilder("<Absolute Path To>/find /home/root/multicraft/servers/ -name '*.log' -delete");
        probuilder.start();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

<Absolute Path To> should ideally be /bin or /usr/bin

ProcessBuilder probuilder = new ProcessBuilder("find /home/root/multicraft/servers/ -name '*Backup*' -delete");
probuilder.directory(new File("<Absolute Path To>"));
probuilder.start();

probuilder.directory expects the working directory where find.

ProcessBuilder giving a "File not found" exception when the file does exist

2 Answers2

Linked

Related