[feature request] Showing available disk space in /home/user volume

[stradicat]

Prerequisites

• [X] I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates.

Feature

Files showing available disk space in /home volume

Describe the solution you'd like Either a bottom bar on the Files window that could poll available disk / volume space on opening Files or after a copy / delete file operation, or a small progress-bar type indicator under the home directory icon (perhaps more in line with elementary OS' interface guidelines).

Right now, I have to go to the terminal to do df -h to see how much space I have left on my /home/user volume. I can see a progress-bar style indicator for Filesystem on the left sidebar, but that shows the available space on / when hovering with the mouse cursor, which isn't of much userspace concern.

[jeremypw]

I guess you have located /home on a different partition? In that case does the partition should show mounted under Devices? If so you can get free space info there both from the "progress bar" and from the tooltip. I agree that this requires you to know/remember which partition /home is located on which is not ideal.

[stradicat]

Hi @jeremypw! Thanks for the prompt reply!

The /home partition is on the same disk as / (it's a laptop). I'll try to illustrate the current situation with some edited screenshots.

At the moment, it's possible to get on-screen available space as a tooltip when hovering over disks (here, the / partition)

If I hover the mouse cursor over the Home folder icon, I get a tooltip that suggests Alt + Home to open the Home folder, which could eventually show available space as well if implemented

Right now, the steps needed to check available space on the /home partition for all users are 3 clicks:

This little quirk could be fixed with either:

• Quick: Tooltips (although they would take up to a minute to refresh if there's a lot of user data)
• Best: Progress-bar indicator like on disks (which, to me, looks both intuitive and elementary-ish)
• Alternative: Bottom bar (which strays a bit away from the observed elementary OS style guidelines, but still useful)

It's now up to you UI specialists; I hope this FR can be of help in the development of eOS. Cheers!

[jeremypw]

@dennismayr Thanks for the clarification. Your three step method for obtaining available disk space for a user home folder in fact gives you, in the overlay, the disk-space used by that folder together with the total numbers of folders and files within that folder. If that folder resides on the / partition then the free space will be the same as shown in the "File System" device tooltip. You can confirm this by right-clicking on the folder and choosing "Properties". The properties window includes a graphic and textual representation of the disk space used by the folder, the total disk space used and the free disk space.

[stradicat]

Indeed.

Now, my / partition has 2,5Gb of free space, but my separate /home partition (on the same disk) has 8,5Gb of free space. The former is visible by hovering over the Filesystem device icon; the latter is requiring a 3-step displacement.

If I'm one of the computer's users sharing that /home partition with others without having a system-wide configured quota, it would still be useful to be able to hover the Home Folder icon and get the available disk space for that /home partition (or having the progress-bar, whichever suits the case best).

How to reconcile both situations to show the same information, that's the question. Windows does it by showing it at the bottom bar in the Explorer window (even in multi-user cases), but that's not really elementary-ish, and doesn't look as good as the overlay or bar indicator.

[jeremypw]

So does the partition that \home is on not appear under Devices? Maybe I'll have to set up an install with a separate \home partition to see what can be done.

[stradicat]

Exactly, it does not appear as a separate volume.

However, while it is indeed the logical step to verify the available space, it feels a tad detached from the initial intention to check available space.

[stradicat]

Perhaps something like internally running an equivalent of df -h | grep '/home', polling the results and regexing the available space. Man, I wish I knew Vala, I'd be forking and testing.

[jeremypw]

@dennismayr I have a workaround for this described under #1412. Not ideal, but this is difficult to implement (not sure it is possible) in Files.

[stradicat]

I just saw your workaround, as after a Kubuntu stint I'm back on Elementary OS.

While it does finally show the available space for the home folder, as it's mounted on its own partition, the unmount controls shown next to it look a tad risky to me, but that's just a personal peeve.

My initial suggestion is that the same space availability meter can be shown either under the "home folder" name, or as hover popup information, which I suppose would be more consistent with the Elementary design guidelines, keeping the devices layout clean and simple.

What do you think?

[jeremypw]

The home partition should be mounted automatically via fstab in which case the unmount button will require entry of the admin password before actually unmounting. For the button to show, Gtk must be reporting that the mount can be unmounted. Might be worth checking the mount options in fstab and removing defaults.

[jeremypw]

I do not disagree with your suggestion, but there are technical difficulties.

[stradicat]

Fair enough; not a show stopper anyway, so no worries here.

Cheers!