Linux: Removing "Thumbs.db" entries from folders

Question

I have a set of nested folders which I transferred from Window 10 to a Linux PC. Without realizing it I also transferred the "Thumbs.db" entries. I say "entries" because when I do a "ls" command on one of the folders, it will show the .jpg files, other folders and also the "Thumbs.db" entry, but it is not colored/highlighted like the files nor the folders.

I can remove the Thumbs.db entry with a rm images/folder/Thumbs.db command, but that seems to be a manual/one-at-a-time operation. "find" does not find them find images/ -name "Thumbs.db" either with or without the double-quotes. Also running with sudo has no effect.

Is there a easy way to get rid of these Thumbs.db entries? Thanks...RDK

Answer 1

Your shell can do "globbing", automatic creation of file names from wildcards.

A simple

rm images/*/Thumbs.db

will delete all the Thumbs.db from direct subfolders of images, so images/a/Thumbs.db, images/wedding/Thumbs.db, images/boat/Thumbs.db…;

Assuming you use bash (which is the default shell on most systems), you can also enable recursive wildcards

shopt -s globstar
rm images/**/Thumbs.db

will go into all subdirectories, and subdirectories, and subdirectories… and delete all Thumbs.db.

But if find doesn't find them, chances are they aren't actually called Thumbs.db. We can try whether it's because capitalization is different:

shopt -s globstar
shopt -s nocaseglob
rm images/**/Thumbs.db

will also delete any thumbs.db, THUMBS.dB, tHumbs.DB…

Answer 2

After an additional web search, I found this command with finds the Thumbs.db entries so they can be deleted. "iname" seems to be the key option:

find images/folder/ -iname Thumbs.db