agedu: Clean up wasted space in Linux
One of my webserver keeps crashing because the system keeps running out of disk space. Agedu is a fantastic visual way of seeing where the disk space keeps going.
After using a computer for long enough we will all eventually run out of hard drive space, it really is just a fact of modern computing. The big question is what do you do next?
In some situations a quick trip to get a drive is required but in many situations space can easily be reclaimed by removing the gunk that’s accumulated, but how do you determine what’s junk? Linux has the du command that will recursively search a director and list all files and there size but it still comes down to you to determine what should be kept and what should be removed.
In comes agedu (age dee you). Like du this new tool searches for files in all directories and lists there size, but it can also differentiate between files that are still in use and ones that haven’t been accessed less often.
From the man pages
agedu scans a directory tree and produces reports about how much disk space is used in each directory and sub-directory, and also how that usage of disk space corresponds to files with last-access times a long time ago.
In other words, agedu is a tool you might use to help you free up disk space. It lets you see which directories are taking up the most space, as du does; but unlike du, it also distinguishes between large collections of data which are still in use and ones which have not been accessed in months or years - for instance, large archives downloaded, unpacked, used once, and never cleaned up. Where du helps you find what’s using your disk space, agedu helps you find what’s wasting your disk space.
agedu has several operating modes. In one mode, it scans your disk and builds an index file containing a data structure which allows it to efficiently retrieve any information it might need. Typically, you would use it in this mode first, and then run it in one of a number of `query’ modes to display a report of the disk space usage of a particular directory and its sub-directories. Those reports can be produced as plain text (much like du) or as HTML. agedu can even run as a miniature web server, presenting each directory’s HTML report with hyperlinks to let you navigate around the file system to similar reports for other directories.
So, the install
Fedora 18, 19, 20 & 21
sudo yum install agedu
Loaded plugins: langpacks
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package agedu.x86_64 0:0-8.r9153.fc21 will be installed
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Dependencies Resolved
========================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
========================================================================================
Installing:
agedu x86_64 0-8.r9153.fc21 fedora 55 k
Transaction Summary
========================================================================================
Install 1 Package
Total download size: 55 k
Installed size: 88 k
Is this ok [y/d/N]: y
Downloading packages:
agedu-0-8.r9153.fc21.x86_64.rpm | 55 kB 00:00:00
Running transaction check
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded
Running transaction (shutdown inhibited)
Installing : agedu-0-8.r9153.fc21.x86_64 1/1
Verifying : agedu-0-8.r9153.fc21.x86_64 1/1
Installed:
agedu.x86_64 0:0-8.r9153.fc21
Complete!
Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt-get install agedu
Basic Usage
The first step is to let agedu scan a directory, bellow I’ve just scanned my Downloads folder:
agedu -s ./Downloads/
Built pathname index, 1032 entries, 96364 bytes of index
Faking directory atimes
Building index
Final index file size = 190304 bytes
To access the report you need run agedus built in web server:
agedu -w
Using Linux /proc/net magic authentication
URL: http://127.0.0.1:43051/
Now just fire up your browser and go to the URL stated: 
Conclusion
There are other options available such as --exclude and --include arguments which let you control what files are indexed, for example if you wanted to see what ISOs were taking up the most space you’d use: agedu -s ./ --exclude '*' --include '*.iso'
This post was designed to written to give you a quick overview of agedu since I have only touched on the options available. Check out the man pages or read thru the developers website for more details.
