The sys admin’s daily grind: ncdu

BLOATED DATA

Article from Issue 81/2007
Author(s):

I’ve never heard of an admin having to remove disks from a server because of a chronic lack of data, but full disks are part of the daily grind. The du clone ncdu will help slim down your data.

I use Nagios to keep track of hard-disk capacity on my server disks. Whenever the successor to NetSaint kindly informs me that the remaining disk capacity on server XY has dropped below the magical threshold of 10%, I may be warned, but the trouble is just starting. If I’m out of luck, the whole data repository could reside on a RAID system without anything in the line of partitioning, and believe me, this is fairly typical for smaller servers. With a bit more luck, Nagios might tell me that the /var partition is the bottleneck, leaving me to launch du and find out where the disk hogs have their megabytes stashed. Unfortunately, output from the Disk Usage tool for overly complicated directory trees, like the ones I have, is less than intuitive.

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
Print Issues
Digital Issues
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Print Subs
Digisubs
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

  • Ncdu

    Ncdu adds some GUI-like features to the classic du command.

    more »
  • gdu, godu, duf

    Three modern tools, gdu, godu, and duf, make the task of checking the utilization level of hard disks easier thanks to fast execution speed and a good graphical implementation.

    more »
  • Charly's Column: Nmon

    Nmon monitors system information. You can use the Nmon’s capture mode to output data to a file, then extract the values you need with a script.

    more »
  • Charly’s Column: Btrfs

    Btrfs might not be complete, but conceptually, it combines so many useful filesystem functions that Charly couldn’t wait to play around with it.

    more »
  • Charly's Column – inxi

    The name of the tool that columnist Charly Kühnast recommends this month may sound like the Teletubbies, but it is but far from infantile when it comes to functionality. In fact, inxi provides detailed and precisely controllable hardware and system usage information for the host computer.

    more »
comments powered by Disqus
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters

Support Our Work

Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

Learn More

News

Tag Cloud

Administration Community Events Hardware Linux Linux Pro Magazine Mobile Programming Security Software Ubuntu Web Development Windows free software open source