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Idea #5722: Comprehensive Disk Management GUI



bug This idea is a duplicate of idea #323: Disk Manager by default.
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Written by eapache the 25 Mar 08 at 21:23. Category: System.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New
Description
There have been many requests on brainstorm for different disk management utilities, and all of them can be summed up into one configuration GUI. This would (in theory) have the following setup:

Tab 1: Free Space
-integrate Baobab (and remove it from the applications menu)
-create an extensible disk cleaner with default plugins for emptying the trash, clearing the firefox cache, possibly deleting logfiles (using policykit), etc.

Tab 2: Health
-allow setting frequency of fsck, so an option something like:
[x]Automatically check my disks every [35] boots.
-a button for immediately checking all filesystems
-S.M.A.R.T. integration

Tab 3: Backup
-a scheduled backup utility that can image the entire disk or zip certain folders using cron.
-allow creating multiple backup 'profiles' for advanced scheduling
-incremental backup would be nice, but probably difficult

Tab 4: Advanced
-integrate the partition editor from the installer, and enhance it to allow fstab editing as well

The exact implementation of the above features/tabs is up for debate, but the concept is far more important.

This would address a huge number of brainstorm ideas floating around, and I think is a great candidate for the 'main feature' for 8.10 (like compiz-fusion was for 7.10).
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eapache wrote on the 25 Mar 08 at 21:32
Just doing a cursory search of brainstorm, I've found the following 10 ideas that would be marked complete if this one is implemented:

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/57/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/183/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/323/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/2426/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/3313/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/3343/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/3678/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/4913/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/5331/

And I'm sure there are many more that I didn't find.

Eldmannen wrote on the 25 Mar 08 at 22:00
Yes, privacy, MRU, cache clean very important.

S.M.A.R.T monitoring very important.

dan.fernandez wrote on the 25 Mar 08 at 22:36
Sir, this is one of the finest ideas i've seen around here in some time. In fact, it may be the best i've read here.

I only have one thing to point: if a developer is reading it, please separate gui from logic (make the recovery of all the info and the backup process separate from the front end to this), so that kubuntu and xubuntu teams may quickly implement an equivalent of this on their prefered window file browser app.

I would love seeing this consistently supported both on my Kde3 at work and Xubuntu at my laptop, and keeping a common core may let people of all three projects work on improvement for all three.

eapache wrote on the 26 Mar 08 at 00:31
@dan.fernandez: Thank you :) The GUI/Logic separation was sort of implied, but I hadn't really thought it out fully. They should definitely be separate.

rouge568 wrote on the 26 Mar 08 at 01:07
A privacy tab (with encryption, etc.) should be added. Great idea!

zooounds wrote on the 26 Mar 08 at 07:58
RAID:

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/5607/

Robsie wrote on the 26 Mar 08 at 18:13
NICE

ben.wade wrote on the 26 Mar 08 at 20:04
I like it.

@ Rouge: I think that rather than a privacy tab, LUKS should be supported by the partition editor.

p4inkiller wrote on the 27 Mar 08 at 14:40
Count me in for this idea. +1

vandykee wrote on the 17 Jun 08 at 05:24
Not sure if this is the right place to post (just joined) but let me recommend this. I know several people who have been wanting a nice integration for this for some time. From what I have seen, there is not yet a powerful GUI frontend for comprehensive hard disk management. This would be useful for administrators to manage large sets of disks "at a glance" and make powerful changes. Obviously Ubuntu is making it's way into the marketplace so we must cater to emerging IT pros as well as home users with a bunch of disks to think about.

The software should definitely include clear, simple ways to:
-partition drives similarly/with gParted
-check SMART status, even of individual drives in RAID arrays or on hubs
-schedule drive maintenance and monitoring tasks using various existing tools
-tons of RAID control for mdadm

like I said I'm just now joining but lurking for some time. I could help make recommendations for interface design if something like this type of work is going on. feel free to pop me an email or point me to a feed of updates if one exists.


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