# &app; Manual

&app; is a graphical, menu-driven viewer that you can use to view and monitor your disk usage and folder structure.

2006
Fabio Marzocca
GNOME Documentation Project

&legal;

Fabio
Marzocca
GNOME Documentation Project

     thesaltydog@gmail.com

Fabio
Marzocca

    thesaltydog@gmail.com

&app; Manual 1.0
April 2006

Emmanuele Bassi ebassi@gmail.com

GNOME Documentation Project

This manual describes version &appversion; of &app;.

## Feedback

To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding the &app; application or this manual, follow the directions in the GNOME Feedback Page.

## Introduction

&app; is is a graphical, menu-driven application to analyse disk usage in any Gnome environment. &app; can easily scan either the whole filesystem tree, or a specific user-requested directory branch (local or remote).

It also auto-detects in real-time any changes made to your home directory as far as any mounted/unmounted device. &app; also provides a full graphical treemap window for each selected folder.

## Getting Started

&app; can be started in three ways:

- from Gnome menu Applications Accessories;

- from a terminal window;

- from Nautilus "Open with..." ;

If you want to start &app; from a terminal window, just type:

`baobab <full_path_to_a_directory>`, then press Return.

If launched from Gnome menu, &app; starts and remains in a stand-by state, waiting for user action.

When you start &app; from the Gnome Menu, the following window is displayed.

### &app; Window

Shows &app; main window. Contains menubar, display area, scrollbars, and statusbar.

The user can then:

- start a full filesystem scan;

- select a specific local directory branch to scan

- select a remote server and folder to scan

- set preferences

If you run a full filesystem scan, &app; window will start drawing the tree as soon as the thread starts scanning the filesystem. If any large partition is mounted on the filesystem, that will be scanned too.

## Usage

### Full filesystem scan

To start a full filesystem scan select Analyzer Scan Filesystem from the menu, or press on the Scan Filesystem toolbar button.

When the scanning process ends up, you will get the full tree of your filesystem, like the one in the next Figure.

#### &app; Full filesystem scan

Shows &app; full filesystem scan window. Contains menubar, display area, scrollbars, and statusbar.

When you run a full filesystem scan, &app; window will start drawing the tree as soon as the thread starts scanning the filesystem. If any large partition is mounted on the filesystem, that will be scanned too.

&app; will display sizes in the directory tree as allocated space. This means that the displayed sizes refer to the actual disk usage and not to the apparent directory size. If you want to view the apparent file size, uncheck View Allocated Space .

&app; will not count the /proc dir, nor any file size that is not related to a "plain" file, so symlinks, character blocks, device blocks will not be part of the directory size.

Hard-links are managed in a different way: this first hardlink is counted as a normal file, while the subsequent links to the same inode device are not counted in the total, but highlighted in the right-hand column of the window.

### Single folder scan

To start a single folder scan select Analyzer Scan Folder... from the menu, or press on the Scan Folder toolbar button.

### Remote scan

If you need to scan a remote server-folder, just click on the toolbar icon Scan Remote Folder or select Analyzer Scan Remote Folder from the menu and you will get the following dialog box. &app; can connect to a server through ssh, ftp, smb, http and https.

#### &app; Remote folder scan

Shows &app; remote folder dialog window.

## Preferences

To change the &app; application preferences, choose Edit Preferences.

### &app; Preferences Window

Preferences window

### Select devices to be scanned

In the first part of the Preferences window, all detected mounted devices are listed. Click on the checkbox to include/exclude the partition into the filesystem scanning operations.

The device mounted on "/" cannot be excluded from the scan.

### Enable monitoring of home

If this option is checked, &app; will constantly monitor any external changes to home directory and warn the user if a file is added/removed.

## Treemaps

Treemap concepts have been developed by Ben Shneiderman in the '90s. Read his vision on treemaps.

### &app; Treemap Window

Treemap's theory. Shows 2 treemap diagrams

Figure shows an example of treemap's theory. Each node (as shown in the tree diagram) has a name (a letter) and an associated size (a number). The size of leaves may represent for instance the size of individual files, the size of non-leaf nodes is the sum of the sizes of its children.

The treemap is constructed via recursive subdivision of the initial rectangle. The size of each sub-rectangle corresponds to the size of the node. The direction of subdivision alternates per level: first horizontally, next vertically, etcetera. As a result, the initial rectangle is partitioned into smaller rectangles, such that the size of each rectangle reflects the size of the leaf. The structure of the tree is also reflected in the treemap, as a result of its construction. Color and annotation can be used to give extra information about the leaves.

Treemaps are very effective when size is the most important feature to be displayed.