How to delete files from the HDFS?

Question

I just downloaded Hortonworks sandbox VM, inside it there are Hadoop with the version 2.7.1. I adding some files by using the

hadoop fs -put /hw1/* /hw1 

...command. After it I am deleting the added files, by the

hadoop fs -rm /hw1/* 

...command, and after it cleaning the recycle bin, by the

hadoop fs -expunge 

...command. But the DFS Remaining space not changed after recyle bin cleaned. Even I can see that the data was truly deleted from the /hw1/ and the recyle bin. I have the fs.trash.interval parameter = 1.

Actually I can find all my data split in chunks in the /hadoop/hdfs/data/current/BP-2048114545-10.0.2.15-1445949559569/current/finalized/subdir0/subdir2 folder, and this is really surprises me, because I expect them to be deleted.

So my question how to delete the data the way that they really will be deleted? After few adding and deletion I got exhausted free space.

Answer 1

Try hadoop fs -rm -R URI

-R option deletes the directory and any content under it recursively.

Answer 2

You can use

hdfs dfs -rm -R /path/to/HDFS/file 

since hadoop dfs has been deprecated.