Notify users when their disk space is running low

Question

Hi all,
I'm an administrator of about 100 Apple macs and an OS X server and generally speaking, problems are pretty easy to fix. There is just one major problem I'm always having and its simple to fix, which is that when Users run out of home disk space (only 600MB each) applications start crashing (understandably). The problem is that users don't actively watch their free disk space and when things start going wrong, I'll come along and point out that they need to delete some things and it'll start working again.
What I'm having trouble with (because I'm an absolute beginner) is making an AppleScript (or whatever would be best) to watch for when their home space is getting full (with 20MB free space) it'll pop up and say "don't trouble the technician, delete some files!" (or something along those lines)
So, here's what I have (pretty pathetic)
tell application "Finder"
set freeSpace to (free space of (get startup disk)) div 1024 div 1024
end tell
Is their a way of finding disk space of a Home Drive (which is on a network drive on the server)
What I'd like is to say
tell application "Finder"
set freeSpace to (free space of (get home)) div 1024 div 1024
end tell
It tells me "can't get free space of folder "stephenl"" (my home folder)
Could anyone please help

Answer 1

--I'm sure there are several ways to do what you want; here's one that works on an individual computer. If necessary, suitable changes should be possible for server situations, but someone else will have to jump in on that. Copy this to Script Editor, make suitable modifications, then save it as an application; be certain "Startup Screen" isn't checked. Either have the user start it when the computer is started up, or place it in the log-in items (System Peferences) so that happens automatically.
set message_ to "Stephen! Don't trouble the technician, delete some files!" -- modify to suit
set MinAllowFS to 20 -- set this to the available disk space you want to trigger one or more of the responses. MB doesn't have to be specified if everything is in MB (max. possible space, etc.), otherwise some adjustments will have to made to the script. To TEST the script, set the number above what you know the available space could be.
repeat --(However often you want to check free space)
delay 5 --that's 5 seconds; if you think every 10 minutes is often enough to check, make that 600; or make it 0 and the script will repeat essentially in the time it takes to run, which is about 2.5 seconds on my machine
try
set bootDiskInfo to do shell script "diskutil list | grep 'stephen'" -- this gets information for all disks, and then finds the line pertaining to disk 'stephen' (change as necessary)
set bootDiskID to last word of bootDiskInfo -- that last word is the identifier for the disk you're after
set FSinfo to do shell script "diskutil info " & bootDiskID & " | grep 'Free Space'" -- similar to the above command, getting the free space for the boot disk.
set ActFS to word 3 of FSinfo -- word 3 is the numerical value of the free space, irrespective of the multiplier (KB, MB, GB etc.); as stated previously, there will have to changes to the script if the spaces range amongst multipliers.
--Pick one or more of the following responses by removing the comment ("--")
if ActFS < MinAllowFS then beep 3
--if ActFS < MinAllowFS then display dialog message_
--if ActFS < MinAllowFS then say "[[rate 180]]" & message_--[here's a link on using speech: http://www.blankreb.com/studioarticles.php?ID=3
end try
end repeat