Is there a good graphical way to represent disk usage changes in the linux / unix file system over time?
Let me clarify: there are several good ways to represent disk usage in the file system. I'm not interested in summary statistics like shared space (as mentioned in du (1)), but more advanced interactive / visualization tools like ncdu, gdmap, filelight or baobab that can give me an idea of where the space is used .
From a technical point of view, I believe that the best approach is quadratic tree maps (as available in gdmap), since it makes better use of the available visual space. For example, the circular approach used by a file file cannot effectively represent huge hierarchies, and it is doubtful how to account for the growing area of outer rings in a view from a human point of view. It looks good, but about that.
Treemaps are perfect for the current snapshot of disk usage in the file system, but I would like to have something similar to see how disk usage evolves over time.
My current solution is very simple: I reset the file system usage state with "ncdu -o" over time, and then compare them side by side using two instances of ncdu. It is very inefficient, but does the job. I would like something more visual though.
All necessary information can be reset using:
find [dir] -printf "%P\t%s\n"
I made a crappy hack to load this status information into gdmap, so I can use two instances of gdmap. However, this is not optimal, since the treemap will correspond to the total selected space in the same rectangle. Thus, you cannot tell whether the same area corresponds more or less to space. If two large directories grow in proportion, they will not change the visualization.
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