Checking File system / Directory size in Linux : Learn "df -k" or "du -sh" *

Check Disk Space with the Commands du and df - Linux

Checking disk space in Linux is important for several reasons:

1. It helps to ensure that there is enough space available for the system to function properly. When the disk is full, the system can become slow or even crash.
2. Checking disk space helps identify any disk usage patterns that might indicate a problem, such as a runaway process or malware that is consuming disk space.
3. Monitoring disk space can help prevent data loss by identifying when disk space is running low and taking appropriate action.
4. It can also help in identifying when it is time to upgrade the storage capacity.
5. It helps in identifying the files and folder which are taking up more space and delete them if not needed.
6. It is also important for security as it can help identify any suspicious files or folders that might have been created by malware.
7. It can also help in monitoring the performance of the system and its capacity to handle more load.

Overall, checking disk space in Linux is an important aspect of maintaining a stable and secure system, and can help identify and prevent problems before they occur.

Linux (and Typically all UNIX based or UNIX alike systems including AIX, Solaris, MAc or CentOS) offer
two commands for checking out free disk space.

Now this is a quick post that I call it (Don't know how I missed it till now. Posting on request of an anonymous user)

1. Linux "df" command :
Report file system disk space usage. That is, it shows information about the file system on which each FILE resides, or all file systems by default.

Syntax:  df [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
  -a, --all             include dummy file systems
  -B, --block-size=SIZE  use SIZE-byte blocks
  -h, --human-readable  print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)
  -H, --si              likewise, but use powers of 1000 not 1024
  -i, --inodes          list inode information instead of block usage
  -k                    like --block-size=1K
  -l, --local           limit listing to local file systems
      --no-sync         do not invoke sync before getting usage info (default)
  -P, --portability     use the POSIX output format
      --sync            invoke sync before getting usage info
  -t, --type=TYPE       limit listing to file systems of type TYPE
  -T, --print-type      print file system type
  -x, --exclude-type=TYPE   limit listing to file systems not of type TYPE
  -v                    (ignored)
      --help     display this help and exit
      --version  output version information and exit
SIZE may be (or may be an integer optionally followed by) one of following:
kB 1000, K 1024, MB 1000*1000, M 1024*1024, and so on for G, T, P, E, Z, Y.

EG. I am in a directory. But "df" command has nothing to deal with that. It outputs current OVERALL status of the system and its partitions.


2. Linux "du" command :
Estimate file space usage. That is, it summarize disk usage of each FILE, recursively for directories.

Syntax: du [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
  -a, --all             write counts for all files, not just directories
      --apparent-size   print apparent sizes, rather than disk usage; although
                          the apparent size is usually smaller, it may be
                          larger due to holes in (`sparse') files, internal
                          fragmentation, indirect blocks, and the like
  -B, --block-size=SIZE  use SIZE-byte blocks
  -b, --bytes           equivalent to `--apparent-size --block-size=1'
  -c, --total           produce a grand total
  -D, --dereference-args  dereference only symlinks that are listed on the
                          command line
      --files0-from=F   summarize disk usage of the NUL-terminated file
                          names specified in file F
  -H                    like --si, but also evokes a warning; will soon
                          change to be equivalent to --dereference-args (-D)
  -h, --human-readable  print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)
      --si              like -h, but use powers of 1000 not 1024
  -k                    like --block-size=1K
  -l, --count-links     count sizes many times if hard linked
  -m                    like --block-size=1M
  -L, --dereference     dereference all symbolic links
  -P, --no-dereference  don't follow any symbolic links (this is the default)
  -0, --null            end each output line with 0 byte rather than newline
  -S, --separate-dirs   do not include size of subdirectories
  -s, --summarize       display only a total for each argument
  -x, --one-file-system  skip directories on different file systems
  -X FILE, --exclude-from=FILE  Exclude files that match any pattern in FILE.
      --exclude=PATTERN  Exclude files that match PATTERN.
      --max-depth=N     print the total for a directory (or file, with --all)
                          only if it is N or fewer levels below the command
                          line argument;  --max-depth=0 is the same as
                          --summarize
      --time            show time of the last modification of any file in the
                          directory, or any of its subdirectories
      --time=WORD       show time as WORD instead of modification time:
                          atime, access, use, ctime or status
      --time-style=STYLE  show times using style STYLE:
                          full-iso, long-iso, iso, +FORMAT
                          FORMAT is interpreted like `date'
      --help     display this help and exit
      --version  output version information and exit
SIZE may be (or may be an integer optionally followed by) one of following:
kB 1000, K 1024, MB 1000*1000, M 1024*1024, and so on for G, T, P, E, Z, Y.
EG. I am in a directory. The "du" command tells about that directory. For eg. the following picture directly outputs the total size of that folder.

Hope this acts like a quick guide to men and women trying to play with Linux and other UNIX alike systems. Cheers :)

By the way i remember a joke on unix that goes like this - Why did the man using UNIX spend all day at the terminal? Because he couldn't figure out how to use the "vi" command to exit!

Just to add more: Remember 3 important commands when you are sitting on a linux, solaris, AIX, FreeBSD, or Mac Box [Huh, enuff. Just remember Unix :)  ]

1. df
df command can get how much space is occupied and  how much available space

2. du
du is the abbreviation of “disk usage”, this command will progressively into each subdirectory

3. fdisk

fdisk can be used to  manage disk partitions. One can do tasks like create new partition or delete an existing partition

Google to retire Meebo Bar on June 6th 2013

An easy and handy tool to the publishers around the globe, Meebo Bar, is now sentenced to death. Come June 6, the Meebo Bar publishing tool will get retired by Google.

The Meebo Bar is a tool that publishers can put on their site to make it easier for users to discover, browse, and share content on their site. Here's an example of the bar on Budget Travel:
Meebo Bar came as a JavaScript plug-in that sits at the bottom of Web pages. It enabled a lot of different social interaction and sharing features.

So now the developers are asked remove the inactive Meebo code from their site as the Meebo Bar. In case they do not do so, teh Meebo bar would not appear after 6th, this month.

It is worthwhile to note that Google bought Meebo for approximately $100 million.

The snippet of the email I got from Google reads as follows-
"Dear Meebo Bar Publisher,
Five years ago, we launched the Meebo Bar to bring community, engagement, and revenue to publisher sites.
As part of the Google team, this continues to be our focus, but we want to best serve mobile and desktop publishers moving forward. Therefore, we have decided to focus our resources on initiatives like the recently launched Google+Sign-In (which includes interactive posts and over-the-air app installs) and the Google+ plug-ins.
This means we will retire the Meebo Bar, effective June 6, 2013."

So, the world is done with an era of Meebo.
Sic..Sic..

Dumpbin to Check Application/DLL Compiled Platform (x86 vs x64)

I will take this oppurtunity to extend my earlier post on finding .SO and .A compiled versions over Linux platforms. You can achive same target in Windows using the Dumpbin utilty. Dumpbin is a program in Visual Studio Tools that helps you display information about a binary file.

Though the utility is much useful, but here I anm only describing about how to use it to check whether a dll is build for x86 or x64 platform. I will dedicate some other post for more usages of Dumpbin.
PS: If you do not have Visual Studio, you have to get Dumpbin by some other means. But if you have MS Studia then it is prebundled with it.

Start Visual Studia Command prompt. One way to do so is:
1. Go to start menu, find your VS2010 application folder
2. In Visual Studio Tools, click on Visual Studio Command Prompt (2010)
3. A command prompt environment will be load.
4. Navigate to your assembly location. Type, dumpbin /headers your_assembly.dll. It will display the following for x86 dll and x64 dll respectively. See the highlighted areas

You can also type dumbin on command prompt to see various Command line arguments. Its easy, but important is that you must remember that this tool can help you do so.
:)

Linux - Check Shared Object Compile Version - .SO and .A files - whether 32 bits or 64 bits - Using file and readelf commands

If you wish to check whether a shared object (.so) in Linux is 32 bits or 64 bits, you can use the following commands:
a. file
2. readelf

Lets see their usage one by one:

1. file XXX.so

file command will output the file type of the given file. It will work for .so files.
You must look for the ELF XX-bit in the output.
It tells you whether the file is 32 bits or 64 bits compiled.


2. readelf -h XXX.so

readelf command will output the information about elf files.
Look for the Class: ELFXX .
The XX will tell you whether the file is 32 bit or 64 bit compiled

It is important to note that that the readelf -h works for archive files (.a) as well.

And for the reference of our users, we can use the Dumpbin utility over Windows for similar and more information over the Windows platform.
A separate blog post will capture those details later.

Sort Blog Posts using Yahoo Pipes - Blogger Posts in alphabetical, chronological, date wise order

Problem Statement: Sort the Blog posts in a desired order like chronological, or Alphabetical order.
One of the many tools: Yahoo Pipes. We will use Yahoo Pipes to solve this problem.

Yahoo! Pipes is a web application from Yahoo! that provides a graphical user interface for building
data mashups that aggregate web feeds, web pages, and other services, creating Web-based apps from
various sources, and publishing those apps. Hence, Yahoo Pipes is an amazing Data Mining Tool.
Or, lets say a Data analysis tool. Now let us see what does it take to get to our solution of sorting the Blog posts in a desired order like chronological, or Alphabetical order. And that too using Yahoo Pipes!!

Step 1: Get the Blog Feed using Atoms
First we get the blog feed URL. In this case we will use :
http://http://new-it-discussions.blogspot.in/atom.xml
Then to include all posts we add this parameter to the above feed url :
?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=999
This will fetch 1000 posts from the blog. Now the complete feed url is :
http://http://new-it-discussions.blogspot.in/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=999


Step 2: Launch the Yahoo Pipes project to create data mashup for aggregating and analysing data
For this Just Create a Yahoo Profile and Register A Pipes Account.

Step 3: Using Yahoo Pipes to create Web based app combining data from different sources and applying analytics
The Left HAndside Menu will have different options and operators.
Use Feed Operator as Input. So, now input to you Pipe will  be the feed from your blog
Now Bring, drag and drop, a Sort Operator.
For reference, please see the image which shows my Pipe in development stage :)

I used the sort by itel.PubDate. This means sorting by Publishing date.
You can sort by Alphabetically and other options. You may also select Ascending or descending.
Now connect the output from this to the final output.
This compleet one Yahoo Pipe.
You can Run and then publish the Yahoo Pipe

Voila!!
Your First Yahoo  PIpe is created.


The Discussions For IT People Blog has created some Pipe for its own usage. You can view them at:
Discussions-For-IT-People-Pipe-BlogListAlphabetical
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b74f9eeb70b27af587832209b7acfbd0
Discussions-For-IT-People-Pipe-BlogListChronological
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=c948a93a254e97b3ad59df059b2983cc