Linux/Basic commands/du

du (abbreviated from disk usage) is a standard Unix program used to estimate file space usage—space used under a particular directory or files on a file system.

du examples

• du -h --max-depth=1 | sort -hr or du -h -d 1 | sort -hr
• du -sh -- *
• du -ah --exclude="*.txt" /tmp/
• Display only current File system: du -ha -x /tmp/
• du -ha --time /tmp/
• Files larger than 100M: du -h -t 100M -a /tmp

Activities

1. Learn about du usage:

-a, In addition to the default output, include information for each non-directory entry

-c, display a grand total of the disk usage found by the other arguments

-d #, the depth at which summing should occur. -d 0 sums at the current level, -d 1 sums at the subdirectory, -d 2 at sub-subdirectories, etc.

-H, calculate disk usage for link references specified on the command line

-k, show sizes as multiples of 1024 bytes, not 512-byte

-L, calculate disk usage for link references anywhere

-s, report only the sum of the usage in the current directory, not for each directory therein contained

-x, only traverse files and directories on the device on which the pathname argument is specified.

See also

• CompTia Linux Administration/Commands/File Management
• df: df -h, df -hi (inodes)
• find and ls
• journalctl --disk-usage