remove-old-files.yaml

--- # playbook to remove log files older than 5 weeks - works well on debian liek and redhat like systems
- hosts: all
  become: true

  vars:
    older_val : 5w
    dirs: "/var/log,/tmp/,/var/tmp"

  tasks:
    - name: Get files older than {{ older_val }} days
      find:
        age: "{{ older_val }}" # file with age equal or more than the value| takes form seconds, minutes, hours, days, or weeks with first character of it, if just number is specified considers it as seconds
        age_stamp: mtime     # The method to find the age| takes form time, ctime, mtime (default)
        paths: "{{ dirs }}"  # the list of directories
        recurse: yes         # recursively scan the directories
        #size: 1m             # files of 1m or more can be used
        file_type: file      # this can take the files type| takes values link, file, directory, any
        patterns: ".+.log.[1-100].gz,.+log-[0-9]{8}.gz,.+-[0-9]{8}" # Remove files like syslog.1.gz or messages-20180215 or access_log-20170926.gz
        use_regex: true
      register: older_files

    - name: Remove the older files
      file:
        path: "{{ item.path }}" 
        state: absent
      with_items: "{{ older_files.files }}"

    - debug: msg="Removed file {{item.path}}"
      with_items: "{{ older_files.files }}"

#NOTE: In the remove file section I had to use item.path though seems un-convenient but that's required. The contents of older_files is a list of dictionarieswith one of it's key pointing to the actual path of file so even though each list element can be accessed with older_files.files.[index-value].path. It can't be directly used as reference in with_items unless numeric loop is used (? never tried), so had to get the array/list element in item and refer its' path using {{ item.path }}