abes-esr / ncdu-web-viewer

Dockerized 🐳 web interface used to visualize and navigate through ncdu results (ncdu is a disk usage analyzer).

ncdu-web-viewer

Web interface used to visualize and navigate through ncdu results (Ncdu is a disk usage analyzer).

This tool could be used internaly at Abes for analyze and cleanup steps when manipulating massive data. Thanks to the web interface it makes easier to give this tool to a librarian. Thanks to the dump feature, it makes easier to analyze very big folder so that only one guy will generate the export/dump of a given folder and all the staff will be able to view it concurrently without generating performance isues on this big folder.

Prerequisites

• docker

Parameters

• NCDU_WEB_VIEWER_SCAN_FROM: two values are allowed (folder or dump)
  • if folder (default value) then it will tell ncdu to scan the /folder-to-scan/ folder in the current container.
  • if dump, then it will tell ncdu to import the /ncdu-dump.json dump and view its content (instead of scanning a folder).
• NCDU_WEB_VIEWER_READONLY: to enable or disable ncdu readonly feature (yes by default, only used with NCDU_WEB_VIEWER_SCAN_FROM=folder feature)

Usage : view a folder after scanning it

By default ncdu will scan the folder /folder-to-scan/. This folder is located inside the container. You have to mount the wanted folder as a docker volume to be able to analyze the folder you want.

Example if you want to analyze the /applis/ folder on your docker host:

docker run --rm \
  -e NCDU_WEB_VIEWER_SCAN_FROM=folder \
  -e NCDU_WEB_VIEWER_READONLY=no \
  -v /applis/:/folder-to-scan/ \
  -p 3000:3000 abesesr/ncdu-web-viewer:1.0.0

Then open your web browser (replace 127.0.0.1 by your server ip): http://127.0.0.1:3000/

Usage : view a ncdu dump

If you want to visualize a precalculated scan of a folder, you can use the dump feature.

You first have to generate a ncdu dump this way:

ssh my-server-to-scan
ncdu -o /tmp/ncdu-dump-applis.json /applis/

Then (if you want on another server) you have to copy your dump and run ncdu-web-viewer this way:

ssh my-web-server
scp my-server-to-scan:/tmp/ncdu-dump-applis.json /opt/
docker run --rm \
  -e NCDU_WEB_VIEWER_SCAN_FROM=dump \
  -v /opt/ncdu-dump-applis.json:/ncdu-dump.json \
  -p 3000:3000 abesesr/ncdu-web-viewer:1.0.0

Then open your web browser (replace 127.0.0.1 by your server ip): http://127.0.0.1:3000/wetty/

Developments and debug

To develop or debug ncdu-web-viewer, you can use the docker-compose.yml in the example folder this way:

cd example/
docker compose up

Then navigate to http://127.0.0.1:3000 or http://127.0.0.1:3001 or http://127.0.0.1:3002 to test the 3 features.

Then CTRL+C, modify the code, and docker compose up again to test your modification.

Deployment

This repository gives a docker-compose.yml / .env example.

Generating a new version of this tool

Use this github action, run the workflow and choose a free incremenal version respecting the sementic versioning rulez: https://github.com/abes-esr/ncdu-web-viewer/actions/workflows/create-release.yml

Tools used

• wetty
• ncdu

See also

• https://pacroy.com/setup-web-terminal-using-wetty-docker-image-dcb1ea75bfaf
• https://github.com/josephpaul0/tdu
• https://github.com/Byron/dua-cli
• https://github.com/konosubakonoakua/ncdu-zig