{"id":5223,"date":"2022-01-21T18:59:06","date_gmt":"2022-01-21T18:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/01\/21\/how-to-check-directory-size-from-the-linux-command-line-cloudsavvy-it\/"},"modified":"2022-01-21T18:59:06","modified_gmt":"2022-01-21T18:59:06","slug":"how-to-check-directory-size-from-the-linux-command-line-cloudsavvy-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/01\/21\/how-to-check-directory-size-from-the-linux-command-line-cloudsavvy-it\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Check Directory Size From the Linux Command Line \u2013 CloudSavvy IT"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\"Bash<\/p>\n

While the Linux command ls<\/code>\u00a0can display the sizes of files, it doesn\u2019t work properly with directories, which will always be displayed as 4096 bytes. You\u2019ll need to use the du<\/code>\u00a0command to recurse into subdirectories and print out a total.<\/p>\n

Using The du Command<\/h2>\n

The best replacement for ls<\/code>\u00a0is to use du<\/code>\u00a0with a couple flags:<\/p>\n

du -had 1<\/pre>\n
The -h<\/code>\u00a0flag stands for \u201chuman readable,\u201d and will format the sizes in KB, MB, and GB for you rather than making you fetch a calculator.<\/p>\n
The -a<\/code>\u00a0flag is \u201call,\u201d and will include individual files as well as directories, making it useful for mimicking the way ls<\/code>\u00a0works.<\/p>\n
The -d 1<\/code>\u00a0flag is a limit on how deep du<\/code>\u00a0will print the results. By default, it\u2019s configured to print every single subdirectory out, which can be a pain if you have lots of nested files. The -d<\/code>\u00a0flag will add them all up and print out the total for each visible directory from where you execute the command.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
If you\u2019d prefer it list every directory, you can run the command with the --apparent-size<\/code>\u00a0flag, which will display the total size of each subdirectory as if you had done right click > Properties in your file explorer.<\/p>\n
This is all jumbled though, so if you\u2019d like to view the biggest directories in the current folder, you can pipe the output to the sort<\/code>\u00a0command. Make sure to also use the -h<\/code>\u00a0flag, or else sort<\/code>\u00a0will treat 128MB<\/code>\u00a0as a bigger number than 1GB<\/code>.<\/p>\n
du -had 1 | sort -rh<\/pre>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
By default, du<\/code> uses the current directory, but you can also target specific directories. Just pass the location in as the last argument.<\/p>\n
du -had 1 .\/world\/<\/pre>\n
Finding The Largest Directories On Your Server<\/h2>\n
A common task on Linux is debugging large amounts of disk usage. If you\u2019d like to view total usage for each disk, you can use df -h<\/code>, or install a monitoring tool like glances<\/code>\u00a0which will show it more cleanly:<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
However, this doesn\u2019t drill down into directories and won\u2019t find the source of the problem. For that, you can use du<\/code>, but remove the -d 1<\/code>\u00a0flag so it will search every directory. Target it at root, sort it, and filter for the top 25 directories so your screen isn\u2019t overflown.<\/p>\n
du -ah \/ | sort -rh | head -n 25<\/pre>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
This may print out a few errors for files that it can\u2019t access; make sure you run it with sudo<\/code>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n