du

What it does

How to write it

du [OPTION]... [FILE]...

Most used

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$ run as a normal user# run as root (or with sudo)

1. 1Size of one folder

   $du -sh /var/log
   2.1G	/var/log

   One line, readable size.

2. 2Which sub-folder is big?

   #du -h --max-depth=1 /var | sort -h

   Sorted, the biggest at the bottom. Then go one level deeper.

3. 3The 10 biggest folders on the root file system

   #du -xh / 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail -10

   -x stays on / and does not count other mounts.

4. 4Sizes of all home folders

   #du -sh /home/*

   Who uses the most space?

5. 5Show files too, bigger than 100 MiB

   #du -ah /srv | awk '$1 ~ /G|[0-9]{3}M/' | sort -h

   Lists big files and folders. find -size +100M is another way.

6. 6Leave out some files

   $du -sh --exclude='*.iso' ~/Downloads

   Size without the ISO images.

7. 7Count files instead of size

   #du --inodes -d 1 /var | sort -n | tail

   Finds folders with millions of small files (when df -i is at 100%).

8. 8Grand total of several folders

   $du -shc /var/log /var/cache /tmp

   The last line is the total.

9. 9Real size vs. apparent size of a VM disk

   $du -h vm.qcow2; du -h --apparent-size vm.qcow2

   A sparse file can look big but use little space.

10. 10Show when folders changed

    $du -h --time -d 1 /srv/backups

    Find backup folders that stopped growing.

11. 11Only show folders above 1 GiB

    #du -h -t 1G -d 2 /var/lib

    Hides all the small stuff.

12. 12Check container storage

    #du -sh /var/lib/containers/storage

    Container images often fill /var. podman system prune cleans unused images.

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