stevleibelt / bash_random_file_selector

Simple bash script collection to randomly select a number of files e.g. fill up an usb stick with mp3 files until it is full

Random File Selector

This simple collection of bash script should ease up solving the task to randomly chose some files and copy them somewhere.

A real world scenario and the reason to code this is to fill up an usb stick with randomly selected mp3 files until it is full.

Core Features

• creates a file list of your media files as a "cache" to speed things up
• copies random files from the list to a destination (like a mounted usb disk)

Future Improvements

• Check free disk space before the start
  • Sum up the used file size and check if it can be copied on the file before doing it
  • Available disk space: du -s <path>
  • Sum up the size for all files: `ls -l | awk '{ total += $5 }; END { print total }
• Maybe add file size to the generated file list
  • Benefit of this, we can configure a "max file size" (which kind of is a max run time)
• Create a configuration file to ease up the copy command (default could be the source path file and the number of files)
• Create a changelog.md
• Put both scripts into one script
• Run the copy script until the device is full or an fixed amout of files are copied (use output of df -i?)
• If write permission is not set
  • create a tempoary directory using >>mktemp -d<<
  • add entries until size of the target is reached
  • copy all stuff from tempoary directory to target using sudo
• Extend the "create_file_list.sh" script with following optional arguments
  • -f|--filter-by-extension
  • -g|--guided
  • -p|--output-file-path
• Extend the "copy_random_files_from_list.sh" script with the following optional arguments
  • -f|--maximum-amount-of-files
  • -g|--guided
  • -p|--destination-path
  • -s|--diskspace-left
• Rewrite in another language to release files for windows/bsd/linux/mac