You need to use the du command: [a] Find and estimate file space usage.
| Tutorial details | |
|---|---|
| Difficulty level | Easy |
| Root privileges | No |
| Requirements | du |
| Est. reading time | Less than a one minute |
Syntax
The basic syntax is:
du
du dirName
du [options] dirName
Examples
Without any options, du command shows the names and used space for each directories including all sub-directories in the current directory:
du
Sample outputs:
Fig.01: du command in action
To find information about /etc and /home/nixcraft directory, enter:
du /path/to/dir
du /etc
du /home/nixcraft
du /root /home/nixcraft
Pass the -h option to get output in human readable format i.e. show output in kilobytes (K), megabytes (M) and gigabytes (G):
du -h /etc
du -h /dir1/file2
du -h /root
du -h
Sample outputs:
8.0K ./.vim 24K ./scripts 48K ./.ssh 16K ./.keychain 2.2M ./.lftp 2.4M .
Pass the -s option to see the total disk space used by a directory:
du -sh
du -sh /etc/
du -sh /etc /home/ /securebackup/
Sample outputs:
4.1M /etc 152K /home/ 902M /securebackup/
Pass the -c to see a grand total for all of the files, type:
du -csh /root/ /etc/ /home/
Sample outputs:
2.4M /root/
4.1M /etc/
152K /home/
6.6M total
See also
- UNIX disk usage command examples – include command line tool such as du, df, ncdu, and GUI tools.
- See du command man page for more information and examples.
🐧 11 comments so far... add one ↓
| Category | List of Unix and Linux commands |
|---|---|
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Thank you very much!
another good one is ncdu
ncdu is nice, thanks for that tip
“du -sh * | sort -r -n”
Show all current files + directories with their size and sort them so that the largest file/folder shows on top and the smallest at the bottom.
thanks sir for this impressive command :)
That should be “du -sh * | sort -r -h”
-n doesn’t take into account the K/M factor, -h does!
If you want largest at the bottom:
“du -sh * | sort -h”
When I read the title the first command came to my mind is “du”.
another usefull command to determine directory size is
du -h | sort -h
it sorts directory by size
Another good option to show disk usage is to limit only to one level, you don’t need all information from all folders each time.
du -h –max-depth=1
It will be faster and it won’t show you lots of information
…and if you don’t want to type out –max-depth=1…
du -sh *
This command is a bit different.
It shows the files under top-level directory, but doesn’t show the total size of the directory.
while with –max-depth=1
it does not show the files, but will show the total size.
In terms of the size of the first-level sub-directories, they are the same.