Auditing Large Unix File Systems?

jstockdale asks: "The recent article on perpendicular recording hard drive technology brought me, as a unix(tm) admin, to reflect on the management of data systems and file servers of capacities >1TB (which exist today and tomorrow will become commonplace). Since Google for once seems useless, what suggestions does the Slashdot crowd have on methods and software to audit changes, visualize file system usage, and in general to determine the qualitative and quantitative nature of the content of large unix file systems?"

Comments

I like treemaps

[Krellan]

I like the idea of treemaps.


http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap-history/index .s html


Hehe, it was originally made to see what was taking up all the room on an 80MB hard disk :)

There's various software available based on this concept, most working like "du", except that you get the results graphically. You typically see a large picture on screen of what directories and files are taking up the most space. It looks like a piece of Mondrian artwork, with the size of rectangles corresponding to the size of space taken, so it is easy at a glance to see what is hogging all of the disk space. It can be drilled down, of course, by clicking to zoom in.

A quick Google search revealed SequoiaView:


http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/


Unfortunately this only runs on Windows, but I'm sure there are similar Linux programs available.