File indexer and searcher

Installation

• Download and change to the directory.
• Run the install script sudo python3 install.py. Python 3 is required.
• The directory may now be deleted.
• Some python libraries might be missing. Install the missing ones by running e.g. `pip install pyyaml'.
  • Vanilla Ubuntu has been tested and requires no extra library. Vanilla Fedora Workstation requires the colorama and yaml python libraries.

The database and log path are saved in /var/lib/file_index_search/config.yaml.

File indexer

Scans and saves all directory entries in a linux filesystem into a SQLite DB, except /proc, /var, /run, /sys, /dev and /boot.

Database

The database saves:

• Entry path as MD5 hash
• Current time
• Entry name
• Entry file extension
• Entry type
• Entry path
• Entry path as placeholder
• Parent directory path
• Entry size
• Creation date
• Last modification date
• Entry owner
• Key as MD5 of entry path, creation date, last modification date and entry owner

Usage

The first run, i.e. when the database is empty, will take much longer. If the log shows a "started" entry and no "finished" or error entry the application is still working.

Native installation

Run file_indexer to start the indexing.

As a service:

• Replace line 6 in mindex.service with ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "file_indexer".
• Copy the mindex.service and mindex.timer to /etc/systemd/system.
• Enable (and start) the service and timer. By default it will run 15 minutes after systemd start and every 12 hours after that.

Installation as docker container

Run docker run -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro --mount source=files-db,target="/etc/files-index" --mount type=bind,source="/",target="/host",readonly indexer to start the indexing.

As a service:

• Copy the mindex.service and mindex.timer to /etc/systemd/system.
• Enable (and start) the service and timer. By default it will run 15 minutes after systemd start and every 12 hours after that.

File searcher

Shows all files or directories that fit the name pattern from the database.

It prints:

• file path
• file type (this property should mostly be ignored because it isn't accurate)
• file size
• last modification date

Usage

You can search the database either with a command line tool or with a GUI in your browser.

Web-GUI in a container

Run docker run -d -p 127.0.0.1:8000:8000/tcp --mount type=bind,source="/var/lib/docker/volumes/files-db/_data",target="/gui_container/data" mmdockermmmm/file_search_gui to use my dockerhub image.

Replace the path in source="" with the directory path containing your database. The path is saved in the config file /var/lib/file_index_search/config.yaml created during the installation.

Visit localhost:8000/search in your browser to access the GUI. It runs as a Django development server.

To shut down the server run docker stop container_ID where container_ID is the string printed after using the docker run command. You can also get the container_ID by running docker container ls.

GUI

The pattern is matched with the SQLite LIKE operator as "%pattern%". Case sensitive search currently is not possible.

After clicking the search button:

• Click on the table head fields (except "File type") to sort the table. You can only sort by one field at a time.
• Click on a "File path" field to copy the path to the clipboard.
• Hover over the charts at the top to expand them in size:
  • Chart showing the distribution of the system's files regarding their size (logarithmic axes).
  • Chart showing how many files have their last modification date in which year.
  • Chart showing which linux user ID owns how many files.
  • Chart showing the distribution of the file types (file extension) regarding the number of files.
  • Chart showing the distribution of the file types (file extension) regarding the size of files.

Native installation

Run file_search pattern to search, replacing the pattern with a full file path or part of it.

The pattern is matched with the SQLite LIKE operator, it can include "%" (any sequence of zero or more characters) and "_" (any single character). It will automatically match as "%pattern%".

Optional arguments:

• -h, --help

          print the help message

• --minSize

          filter by minimum file size (in bytes), inclusive comparison

• --maxSize

          filter by maximum file size (in bytes), inclusive comparison

• --case

          enable case sensitive pattern matching

TODO

File indexer

• General optimizations and bug fixes
• Change the try for UnicodeEncodeError so that it doesn't just skip the entry (it currently is a workaround because it threw errors at multiple places)
• Make is_hidden() work for directories like /home/moritz/.mozilla
• Why are all entries counted as symlinks
• Make excluding /... directories optional
• Make exckuding hidden directories optional
• File extension field for directories should be null
• Get input from user to decide which directory to scan (in run command?)
• Check .is_dir() less often
• Maybe use os.walk() instead of own function
• Make it work for windows
• Where to save config files? https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/68721/where-should-user-configuration-files-go

File searcher

• add more search options
  • match exact pattern without %
• maybe: users can only see their own entries (uid)
• GUI
• analyzing: what file types (extension) take up how much space, recommend to remove old files

GUI

• fix bug of histogram y-axis on smaller queries /home/moritz/VDR (is it a matplotlib bug?)
• caching for images
• form should give option to exclude displaying directories
• replace "" with "no extension" in pie charts
• pattern matching can take % or _ as LIKE
• table to get the user name for every user id
• calendar plot/heatmap (make sure to print the number per day because the coloring can go wrong)
• sort pie charts again after adding "other"
• docs: describe where and how to e.g. add more plots etc
• IF NO FILE MATCHED THE PATTERN, PLOTS THROW ERROR?
  • also error if pattern is only whitespace
• make case sensitive search possible