The Flit: Getting rid of Apple and MS fly shit

type: note | domain: technology | topic: software | lang: en | pub: 2020-11-07

Apple and Microsoft drop fly shit on your harddisk. Files like Thumbs.db, Thumbs.db:encryptable and .DS_Store are pooped everywhere. Although well-intentioned, these files pollute your environment. You can hardly prevent their creation but you can eradicate them.

My grandmother yelled: "Those damned mosquitoes". She grabbed the "FLIT", she sprayed in every corner of the bedroom where I was ready to go to sleep. After "The Flit" I slept like a rose (Dutch-ism). I haven't seen them for 50 years since the emergence of the modern spray can.

As a memorial, you will find a small Cygwin / Linux script for exterminating "Thumbs.db" et al on your hard disk. Modern times, different pests, different solutions. Hallelujah and here we go!

Scripts for deleting Thumbs.db, Thumbs.db:encryptable, .DS_Store, ...

Linux

Put this in a file flit.sh somewhere, like desktop or home, make it executable and modify to taste...

   #!/bin/bash
   find /data \( -name 'Thumbs.db' -or -name 'desktop.ini' -or -name 'Thumbs.db:encryptable' -or -name 'Thumbs.dbencryptable' -or -name '.DS_Store' \) -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf

• find finds (recursive) the files between escaped parenthesis \(...\) and lists the files (print0) in directory /data. Output is piped to xargs that takes care of removal (rm). The zero's deal with file names with spaces.
• It is one of many possible approaches, but what I like about this approach is that you can check output first, by running it in a shell without | xargs -0 rm -rf.
• On our server this script runs every night by using cron.

Windows

• A DOS batch file named flit.cmd could be something like:

    @echo on
    C:
    cd /installers
    del /s /q /f Thumbs.db desktop.ini .DS_Store Thumbs.db:encryptable
    echo Finished FLIT.cmd
    pause