This week's tool is "Baobab." It is a Linux based tool that helps analyze disk usage. If any sys admins out there have any experience with Ubuntu Linux, they may already be familiar with Baobab (it's listed as "Disk Usage Analyzer" in your 'Accessories' toolbar).
Below is a sample image of the output you get after you first start Baobab:
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The above output is very pretty and makes identifying what's taking up the most disk resources a snap.
However, the above snapshot is a view of local disk usage. The killer feature of this tool is that it allows you to view disk usage on remote servers using protocols like ssh, ftp, webdav, etc.
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If you're at risk of running out of disk space on your web server, you can plug in your log in information and get a visual representation of what's eating up all them gigabytes.
I'll illustrate the usefulness of this with a real scenario we faced at the Mozplex a while back. We have an Intranet file server that we use to store the valuable information that is used to power SEOmoz (like articles, legal documents, and the entire Wu-tang Clan discography).
One day I came into work and was greeted with an urgent email saying that nobody could save any new documents on the Intranet. I quickly logged in and discovered that the disks were completely full. I calmly thought to myself, "OMG WTF?" I began solving the problem by plugging in my ssh credentials and grabbing a cup of coffee while Baobab worked its magic. After a short while, the entire scan was complete and I was able to pinpoint the problem:
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DREAM THEATER?!?
3.4 GB OF DREAM THEATER?!
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I'll illustrate the usefulness of this with a real scenario we faced at the Mozplex a while back. We have an Intranet file server that we use to store the valuable information that is used to power SEOmoz (like articles, legal documents, and the entire Wu-tang Clan discography).
One day I came into work and was greeted with an urgent email saying that nobody could save any new documents on the Intranet. I quickly logged in and discovered that the disks were completely full. I calmly thought to myself, "OMG WTF?" I began solving the problem by plugging in my ssh credentials and grabbing a cup of coffee while Baobab worked its magic. After a short while, the entire scan was complete and I was able to pinpoint the problem:
That's a whole lot of rock! Come with me as I journey further into the ROCK! that powers SEOmoz.
Well well well, what do we have here......
DREAM THEATER?!?
3.4 GB OF DREAM THEATER?!
Only 2.7 GB of The Cure
In just a few minutes I was able to determine that Dream Theatre and Robert Smith were partly at fault for our Intranet file sharing problems. After a few more minutes, I was able to really dig into the Baobab report and trim down disk usage significantly.
As you can see, Baobab allows you to view your disk usage in a very convenient way. Other visualization formats are available, so if you get a chance play around with it, it's very cool.
Baobab is currently Linux only (although there have been reports of it working with Mac OS X). If you don't have access to a Linux machine, VMware is a nice compromise. I recently made the switch to OS X and am running Gutsy on my Macbook using VMware fusion.
If anybody out there has any other recommendations for tools that can analyze disk usage on remote machines, please say so!
That's it for this week! Next week we'll be back with another tool that can help make the tech in your company less technical.
As you can see, Baobab allows you to view your disk usage in a very convenient way. Other visualization formats are available, so if you get a chance play around with it, it's very cool.
Baobab is currently Linux only (although there have been reports of it working with Mac OS X). If you don't have access to a Linux machine, VMware is a nice compromise. I recently made the switch to OS X and am running Gutsy on my Macbook using VMware fusion.
If anybody out there has any other recommendations for tools that can analyze disk usage on remote machines, please say so!
That's it for this week! Next week we'll be back with another tool that can help make the tech in your company less technical.
You forgot to list its many capabilities as a color wheel...
Whatever you do...DON'T put 'prayers for rain' and 'same deep water as you' on a continuous loop. You could end up having Rand standing on the edge of his desk in tear streamed mascara threatening to jump!
Not intended to be a comment against Rand...more a comment on the depressing nature of The Cures music and their tendancy to wear makeup. Besides...the mental imagery was funny to me! :)
I think we'll be safe as I'm more partial to the Disintegration and Galore albums :)
Now you've done it...you have me searching the web for their music. Try as a might, I can't seem to fit a cassette into the cd drive =/
The remote access seems particularly awesome. Any leads on how to get this to run natively on OS X (without VMWare)? Alternatively, could it be installed and run from a Linux webserver? Sorry, I'm a bit nooby when it comes to what can and can't be done through SSH.
I'd also like to mention that Ubuntu (which I'm pretty sure means "open to many things" in some African dialect) is really awesome, anyone who runs Windows should check it out. I just like OS X better.
There's a link on the home page for a patch to be used against the source. I've always got a little window open connected to an ubuntu desktop, so I haven't tried it yet.
edit: Actually thanks to the links provided by pbhj below, there are some alternatives (haven't tried yet).
There's Macfilelight (https://developer.berlios.de/projects/macfilelight/) for OSX
and then there's
Philesight (https://zevv.nl/play/code/philesight/#) which is a server side script.
I use Disk Inventory X on my mac. It does basically the same thing (don't know about remote access) and has saved me a couple of times. (I once had a system log file grow to 10gb) https://www.derlien.com/ Also it is free!
I second Disk Inventory X - it's fast, free, and works well!
Is there like a tool to test a Site for general tech issues? This is one point for me as an SEO I'm trying to get into lately, tech stuff is important to evaluate but from the SEO perspective
Is there like a general list to SEO technical aspects we should check permanently or have in mind? Thanks in advance.
We're kinda trying to save those for future posts :)
One thing off the top of my head would be recommending pingdom (www.pingdom.com)
It's a remote monitoring service that will alert you when your site is down. There are a ton of these sites out there, but pingdom by far provides the most accurate results.
I'm gonna take a cue from Sean's comment and convey how important uptime is to SEO by using his phone analogy.
You can't get no SEO with no dial tone on your telephone. If your site is offline you can't optimize the engines. :)
Thumbs up, as a seo/social guy i'd say my Tech understanding was somewhere around the level of the stone wheel at times... then again I grew up with a BBC micro computer :)
Thus whilst I'd agree with Sean that this is tech and not what I read seomoz for....
I still like it - as just skimming it I can see its a good article and the time I DO need to think about it I can pop back here! So keep them coming and maybe I'll figure out what the heck this Linux thingy is...
Gotta give you a thumbs-up just for Dream Theater - they're my husband's favorite band ever. Anyway, great post - very interesting tool!
That view of disk space usage is called "filelight" (methylblue.com/filelight/; or see wikipedia or lifehacker) it's been around in KDE for ages (or seems that way, KDE3 has it as a standard view and the remote stuff can just work through KIO slaves).
This is just a Gnome version of that so that people using Gnome don't need the KDE libraries to use filelight views. As it happens my fave file manager for managing web hosts is Krusader, it (of course) incorporates an optional filelight view for directory trees (local or remote, SSH, FTP whatever KDE is very good at hiding the protocol used out of the way).
Lost you all yet?
Anyhoo ... there's JDiskReport for MS-Windows/Mac only IIRC which does those nice views, don't know about the remote stuff. It's a JAR file, download and click on it, then let it chug for a while and voila!
pbhj
Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
I really like the pinwheel / sector layout as a data visualization tool.
I had no idea that it was originally in filelight OR that the dude developed it was a core Amarok contributor OR that he now works at Last.fm
It'd be really cool to go through the filelight source and possibly lift something for use with moz projects.
Mel, With all due respect, and please don't take this the wrong way, this isn't the type of content I read SEOmoz for. This is more along the lines of network computing. While I understand storage, (block and file), etc.; as an SEO I expect infrastructure to be there the same way I expect dial tone to make a phone call.
That said, in a different forum, I think your information would be quite useful.
Thanks, Sean
Sean,
No worries, its just the internets. If I had posted an article about my ceramics hobby and you had tore into that, then I'd be upset :)
Do you have any objections to a weekly 'tech tool / trick' of the week?
Future articles won't necessarily be overtly geeky and cover 'linux disk management' software, just some tools and techniques that might help other small businesses.
-Mel
Mel,
I think this sort of weekly content is nice for people who are interested in it, plus it lets you guys on the Dev Team play in the sandbox a little more.
As for people who aren't really interested in these sorts of posts, do just like you'd do with any other post that doesn't pertain to your particular tastes or interests: skip it. The guys have even made it easy for you; when you see a 'Tool of the Week' post, you'll know it's about dev tools and such. Which will either give you a big, warm, fuzzy feeling, or it'll let you know you can keep perusing reddit until the next post comes along.
PS-Thanks for the SXSW shirts, Sean!
I agree with Scott. I've just moved to Ubuntu full time. It's excellent, better than vista and I feel a youmoz post coming on!
Hey Mel,
I don't have any objection to anything you guys might want to post - it is, after all - your blog. Just wanted to offer my candid feedback. Hopefully I did so in a respectful manner. The content itself was spot on for the subject covered. And well written to boot.
To those who were offended by my comment (the thumbs down crowd), please understand it wasn't a personal attack on Mel or his intelligence. It was just my own $.02, which in these times of recession, is now worth somewhere in the range of $.01. ;)
Sean,
Does this mean you ARE open to a post about my ceramics hobby ?
-Mel
@ Mel,
As long as they're modeled after 18th or 19th century English Tudor, I see no problem with that at all. ;)
P.S. By the combination of thumbs up you received on this article, plus the thumbs down I received on my comment - it seems the consensus is - "Keep it coming"! :)
Sean - might not be critical to you right now, but the next time you have a piece of linkbait on a site or a client who's expecting a big influx of traffic to their site, referencing this post as a way to manage viral traffic levels (or server slowness) could be quite valuable.
Good point Rand. My brain isn't always fast enough to make the association.