/bin/rm: Argument list too long

I was doing some replication testing with master-master on Percona 5.6 today and I kept having problems with my test instances not starting or shutting down when I changed the my.cnf setting file to use the new relay log files. I had previously used theses boxes for master-slave testing and had left it for weeks un-attended and replication had broken and relay log files were building up like crazy.

I ran this:
STOP SLAVE;
RESET SLAVE;

cd into this directory:

/var/log/mysql/

Lots of relay files like this:

relay.137105

I thought that RESET SLAVE was suppose to delete and those. Maybe it is and it just taking a long time.

So I try to delete them:

rm /var/log/mysql/relay.*
-bash: /bin/rm: Argument list too long

rm /var/log/mysql/relay.1*

bash: /bin/rm: Argument list too long

I was able to run this:

rm /var/log/mysql/relay.12*
rm /var/log/mysql/relay.13*
rm /var/log/mysql/relay.14*
and on and on

I didn't want to spend all night doing this.

I tried this:

cd /var/log/mysql/

find . -name "relay.*" -print | xargs rm

Copied from here: http://itigloo.com/how-do-i/binrm-argument-list-too-long-error/

Still a no go. It just hangs. Seems to be too much for my underpowered VM to handle.

I tried it again with only one file:

find . -name "relay.097436" -print | xargs rm

It worked. 

How about a few more files:

find . -name "relay.3*" -print | xargs rm

That worked.

I tried this again:

find . -name "relay.*" -print | xargs rm

At last it worked!!