Check disk space used in a directory

cli_man · 08-22-2003, 02:03 PM

I am looking for a script that I can put in cron to run daily and check all the directorys directly off the /home directory and then email me any of them that are over 500 Megs in size. I can't find anything that will do that so I thought someone here would probably know.

What I need this for: I have servers that I do webhosting on, I want a report of all the users that are over there 500 meg limit, the script has to check all and add up the amount of data in the directory and subdirecties of each website.

If you know of anything like that please help me out, I could really use this. Thanks.

ranger_nemo · 08-22-2003, 03:03 PM

Sounds like a good time to learn bash scripting.

"du -hs /home/*" as root will give you the size of each directory in /home.

"du -hs /home/* | sort -r" will sort them from largest to smallest.

"du -hs /home/* | sort -r > /root/home_report" will put them into a file you can mail to yourself.

"mail" is the program you will use to send yourself the report. Haven't used it, so I can't really help you there.

You can put it all into a couple-line bash script, and put that into your cron.

Or... Set-up disk quotas...

https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/...sk-quotas.html

david_ross · 08-22-2003, 03:10 PM

Here is some thing simple that should work:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
IFS="
"
for dir in `ls /home`; do
out=`du -s /home/$dir`
tot=`echo $out | awk {'print $1'}`
if [ $tot -gt 512000 ];then
echo "Dir "`echo $out | awk {'print $2'}`" is over 500MB"
fi
done

cli_man · 08-22-2003, 03:59 PM

Dang your good, thanks, and yes I know I need to learn some bash scripting I just haven't had the time yet. That script does exactly what I needed.

boothcat4320 · 02-06-2009, 11:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ranger_nemo

Sounds like a good time to learn bash scripting.

"du -hs /home/*" as root will give you the size of each directory in /home.

"du -hs /home/* | sort -r" will sort them from largest to smallest.

"du -hs /home/* | sort -r > /root/home_report" will put them into a file you can mail to yourself.

"mail" is the program you will use to send yourself the report. Haven't used it, so I can't really help you there.

You can put it all into a couple-line bash script, and put that into your cron.

Or... Set-up disk quotas...

I have a small correction.

"sort -r" will not accomplish what you want to to for 2 reasons.

1) "sort -r" only reverses the sort order, if the "du" command sends it out of order, the "sort -r" will not fix it only reverse it.

2) "du -hs" will put the results in a human readable form. This means that 281K will be considered a higher number that 142G by the "sort" command.

A better, albeit less readable, solution would be:
"du -s /home/* | sort -nr"

As for mailing the results, you can use the following command to email the results:
"du -s /home/* | sort -nr | mail -s 'Home Directory Usage' email@domain.com"

I use the following crontab command to monitor my /var directory (Website and log files can get out of control). It mails me the results every Sunday night.

00**0 root du -s /var/* | sort -nr | mail -s 'Var Directory Usage' address@domain.com

jim-the_linux_guy · 03-13-2009, 03:28 PM

Don't forget the du command allows you to set the units (K, M, MB, G, etc.) the program should use when displaying the results. Although it is not as pretty as "du -hs *", it is better than "du -s *" (as long as the appropriate unit is selected), and the sort command produces the results you're looking for.

Try this:

du -sBM * | sort -nr

M specifies all results will be displayed in 1M units (1024x1024). See man du for additional valid units.