I'm using the following crontab, once an hour, to move any files with the .mp3 extension from the dir "webupload" to the dir "complete" :
60 * * * * find usr/webupload -type f -maxdepth 1 -name "*.mp3" -exec mv {} usr/webupload/complete \;
The problem is that "webupload" contains lots of partial files being transferred.
I've read about a lot of different ways to achieve this but I think i'm more confused now than I was when I started!
What is the best practice or easiest way to only move the completed uploads?
Many thanks :)
It's going to be hard to tell when a file is completely written unless it is renamed when the download is completed, but you could change your find command and add -mmin +1 so that it only looks for files which have been modified more than 1 minutes ago (meaning that download is likely completed). Also, you should use / at the beginning of your paths rather than the relative paths your using:
60 * * * * find /usr/webupload -type f -mmin +1 -maxdepth 1 -name "*.mp3" -exec mv {} /usr/webupload/complete \;
You could obviously make the modification time longer (eg. 10 minutes -mmin +10) if you want to be more certain that the file has been downloaded.