Folder size linux

Question

Hi

I need to monitor folders on my linux machine periodically to check whether they are exceeding certain limits.

I have checked stat function call but running stat recursively on all sub folders and files is time consuming and I need to do this for all folders.

Does kernal maintain any datastructures which I can interpret in my program.Or is their any standard api for this.

Answer 1

If you need to enforce limits then use quotas

Answer 2

You want quotactl:

quotactl -- manipulate filesystem quotas

SYNOPSIS
     #include <sys/types.h>   /* types needed by quota.h */
     #include <sys/quota.h>   /* for disk quotas */

Answer 3

In case the quota mechanism isn't suitible, then inotify might be handy:

From wikipedia:

inotify is a Linux kernel subsystem that acts to extend filesystems to notice changes to the filesystem, and report those changes to applications.report those changes to applications.

Answer 4

Calling stat recursively is the only way to get the current folder size. If you want to continuously monitor the file system, take a look at inotify.

Answer 5

I agree with @Axel. However if you really need to do this in code, you could execute the du shell command via popen:

FILE* pf = popen("du -ch [your folder] | grep total")

Then read the output from the command via the file handle and fgets(...)

Answer 6

Type

du -sm directory_name

Will give you the total size of the directory in megabytes recursively.

Type

man du

for help with this command.