Output file size checking

[DavidBrainard]

RTB3 does not contain any mechanisms for predicting and then warning about setting loose renderings that might fill up the entire disk with large files. If we could figure out a reasonable way to implement such error checking, it might save some headaches. A workaround is to point RTB3 output at a disk that does not contain the system, so that filling it will not crash the computer.

[npcottaris]

An alternative mechanism is to monitor free hard disk space before each rendering and to alert the user / suspend execution if the free space falls below a threshold value, say 1GByte. This would be useful for users with a single hard disk.

On Jan 5, 2014, at 9:58 AM, David Brainard notifications@github.com wrote:

RTB3 does not contain any mechanisms for predicting and then warning about setting loose renderings that might fill up the entire disk with large files. If we could figure out a reasonable way to implement such error checking, it might save some headaches. A workaround is to point RTB3 output at a disk that does not contain the system, so that filling it will not crash the computer.

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[benjamin-heasly]

I did a little bit of checking on how we might monitor free disk space. I don't see a built-in Matlab way to do this, but maybe I missed it?

On Unix-like systems, I think we can use the df command (http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?df). Something like this should work, and then we'd have scan the output: system('df -f')

On Windows, we might be able to use the wmic command, which I've never tried (http://serverfault.com/questions/68300/check-free-disk-space-using-batch-commands). Something like this, maybe: system('wmic logicaldisk where "DeviceID=''C:''" get FreeSpace')