Cool Linux utility alert: agedu

I like the agedu utility.  I recently found it while searching the ‘net, and I want to thank all involved with it (see the page for credits and info).

This neat utility helps you get a general understanding of two main things: 1.) How much space you’ve consumed on the filesystem, and 2.) roughly how old it is… in a single, graphical (optionally) representation.  Of course, at the time of this writing, it is listed as a BETA, so use at your own risk, etc., etc.  But to save you the 5 minutes of reading the web page, the readme,  and the man page, I’ve tossed together a quick installation/configuration/use cheat sheet….

First, make a directory, get the gzipped tar, and expand it:

mkdir /tmp/agedu;cd /tmp/agedu
wget http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/agedu/agedu-r8442.tar.gz
tar -zxvf agedu-r8442.tar.gz

Then, you have to compile/install it:

cd agedu-r8442/
./configure
make
make install

(optionally) make clean

Now, you get to use it.  Of course, you could now read the man page, and get all the details.  But to cut to the chase, you need to build an index file, and then either view it as text (which is boring), or dump out to html (which is really the whole point here), and view with a browser.  The author includes a method to spawn its own little web daemon, but I prefer just dumping an html file for my own use.  Here’s an example, using my home directory (note that I build the index file in /tmp just to stay clean):

cd /tmp
agedu -s /home/jpavlov/

(the “-s” does a scan at the given point, and creates the index)
agedu -H /home/jpavlov/ -R > report.html
(the “-H” generates the html output to stdout, hence the re-direct;  the “-R” deletes the index file for cleanup, since we’re done with it)

…Then open a browser, and put in the URL for the report file you created:

file:///tmp/report.html

And that’s it.  You can enjoy the visual splendor, and feel the realization that you’re wasting all that space creep over you.  Make sure to drop the author a line, and give him some feedback.  I’m off to try this out on a few NCP volumes on some OES Linux servers to see how the users’ home directories look…

Enjoy!

1 Comment

  1. Steve

    Way cool!
    Thanks Much for the examples.
    I got it running very quickly and now have an internal web site with links to agedu reports for various NFS mounted partitions.

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