Visual representation used space

[Yaguznal]

Hello everyone!

Thanks in advance for thinking with me.

I am looking for a way to visually represent the used space in my tank.

Space is running low and I have no clue of where to start. A lot of processes run automatically and could produce huge files. There's backups I did years ago of which I forgot how big they are. I have a few bitsyncs running for other ppl to backup their shit. I have giant photo libraries which could be converted to jpgs if they are too big and not used for a few years.

In short; I do not know how to effectively start deleting stuff from nearly 5 terrabytes of data as I do not know how big stuff is.

I always use Spacemonger to clean out my windows machines. You may know one of the alternatives for that (http://alternativeto.net/software/spacemonger/). I can not begin to explain how useful a tool this has been for me.
Also, my machine is not in my LAN. I access it remotely trough SSH and a few services (none of use in this case). CIFS and spacemonger would work but that would mean I have to setup OpenVPN and cifs to secure it all. I will do that if there is no other (relatively easier) option.

So my question is: Is there a way to do the same visual representation of used space for FreeNAS?
It would be awesome if it would be built in as FreeNAS is about storage and the management thereof. I am guessing everyone running a network attached storage would benefit from this.

Many thanks in advance!

 

[depasseg]

Mount the cifs share as a drive on a windows machine and run the scan on that.

I've been using WinDirStat to do this for years.
https://windirstat.info/

 

[jgreco]

Hello everyone!

Thanks in advance for thinking with me.

I am looking for a way to visually represent the used space in my tank.

Is there some reason you need it to be "visual"?

What's wrong with the extremely traditional UNIX

# du | sort -nr | head -20

strategy? Or you can replace the head command with more.

 

[Yaguznal]

@depasseg
I will add the fact that my machine is remote to my FP. Maybe now is the time to finally start with a proper Openvpn jail and make it work too. That means I will have to properly configure cifs so no one in that network can see and access those shares.

At the moment I only ssh to it. I have a few services running that I can access remotely too but none of use in my quest. Maybe I can enable ftp if there's a ftp spacemonger app?

 

[Yaguznal]

@jgreco
I am running your command right now. It seems to take ages though to get the result calculated.
I am a visual person (hence photographer). I think it's easier for me to assess a situation if it is represented visually.

 

[jgreco]

It's walking through all your files trying to make sense of it all. It'll take some time, just as any other tool would.

 

[Yaguznal]

I am reading about the command as I'm waiting for the result and from what I read it only shows the result for the files and folders of the folder you are in. With all the files and folders I have, that will take decades to sift trough. It is not adequate for my intent. I need something that will map the whole tank so I can zoom in and out in real time.

Is there no webbased tool such as many webhosts have in the admin pannel?

 

[danb35]

Is there no webbased tool such as many webhosts have in the admin pannel?

No. At least, not standard as part of FreeNAS. The Storage screen in the web GUI will break it down by dataset, but even that doesn't give you a picture. Such tools certainly exist, and I'd expect one could be installed in a jail, but nothing like that comes standard with the system.

 

[fracai]

There are a number of tools that can generate maps of your data. Most are KDE or Gnome applications (FileLight is one, including a list of alternatives).

The one I'm going to investigate further is PhileSight as it can be run on the command line and generates image output. I could see a nice web interface where clicking on a segment of the image would refocus the chart on the folder hierarchy from that point. The GUI applications I've seen have this behavior.

Edit: ... apparently PhileSight can do that: http://zevv.nl/play/code/philesight/philesight.cgi

 

[fracai]

The comments indicate some possible problems on FreeBSD and there hasn't been much activity. But, there are a few other projects and translations on GitHub that might be promising as well.

 

[fracai]

Gah, it's right on the PhileSight page. development has shifted to DUC.

 

[Yaguznal]

Wow @fracai. That looks promising! Do you think it's possible to make this a jail accessible trough https? Maybe we can eventually make this a plugin.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

it only shows the result for the files and folders of the folder you are in

Check the man page for du, and look at the depth option. Makes it much more useful.

 

[cyberjock]

Any of these options aren't going to include snapshots.. so you'll have more work to do afterwards too.

 

[Yaguznal]

I have tried to install DUC in a jail to no avail. (I'm even struggling on a well documented OpenVPN installation.) And since we can't set up another unix system in one, I have then tried to set up a Debian virtualbox which was native for DUC. VNC totally messed up my keyboard layout so I couldn't even do the basics like updating (/ didnt work). I tried with Ubuntu, which has a DUC package in their package app so I only needed to click. That didn't have a gui and using my keyboard to get that going wasn't going to work. Then I noticed Ubuntu and Debian already had a space virtualization built in. That was one sad aha moment. With all the trouble I got with vnc, I simply decided that I'd reimport that wXP virtual install I had from way back and use spacemonger on storage shares.

It worked.

But it's XP.

I think we could do better.

One thing that I noticed too is that if I shared my tank with a jail as a storage, it would complain that my jails folder was in it. I could only share the folders around the jails folder individually so I couldn't clean out my jails folder. At least they have separate data sets I can look up.

It would make sense that if the jail folder were to be included in space calculation, we would leave out the shared mounting points to avoid and endless loop. If someone were to make such plugin :)

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Have you tried JDiskReport?