Ballast

Dead-simple disk space emergency release. ~250 lines of bash.

Pre-allocates disk space. When disk fills up, drops it to buy you time and alerts your team.

Install

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cole-robertson/ballast/master/install.sh | sudo bash

Usage

# Setup
sudo ballast init                    # Create 10GB ballast file
sudo systemctl enable --now ballast  # Start daemon

# Monitor
sudo ballast status                  # Check disk and ballast state
sudo journalctl -u ballast -f        # Watch logs

# Emergency
sudo ballast drop                    # Manually drop ballast
sudo ballast recover                 # Recreate after cleanup

How It Works

Normal:     10GB ballast file reserves space
               ↓
Disk fills: Free space < 15GB → drop ballast → alert sent → 10GB freed
               ↓
Recovery:   Free space > 30GB → recreate ballast → alert sent

Defaults

Works with zero config:

Setting	Default
Ballast	10GB (capped at 20% of disk)
Drop	when free < 15GB (1.5× ballast)
Recover	when free > 30GB (3× ballast)

Configuration

Only needed for alerts. Edit /etc/ballast.conf:

[discord]
enabled = true
webhook = https://discord.com/api/webhooks/XXX/YYY

[slack]
enabled = true
webhook = https://hooks.slack.com/services/XXX/YYY/ZZZ

[webhook]
enabled = true
url = https://example.com/hook

Then restart: sudo systemctl restart ballast

Uninstall

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cole-robertson/ballast/master/uninstall.sh | sudo bash

License

MIT