Linux.com: Custom Scripting Gives Users a Safe-du

"As a system administrator, there are two ways you can interact with users: force them to follow the rules or encourage them with tools and guidelines. I prefer the second approach, as I think people generally want to do the right thing. Also, if people don't follow the rules at your company, that is a management problem, not a computer problem. Therefore, I prefer to concentrate my attention on helpful tools and scripts, which is exactly what I did recently to solve a typical system administrator problem.

"My company has a Linux cluster with a terabyte of attached storage. Over time we noticed the head node was becoming more overloaded. Inspection of the system showed that users were starting dozens of copies of the du utility to determine disk space usage..."

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