The Linux “du” (Disk Usage) is a standard Unix/Linux command, used to check the information of disk usage of files and directories on a machine.
The du command has many parameter options that can be used to get the results in many formats. The du command also displays the files and directory sizes in a recursive manner.
This article explains 10 useful “du” commands with their examples, which might help you to find out the sizes of files and directories in Linux. The information provided in this article is taken from the man pages of du command.
Read Also:
- 12 “df” Command to Check Linux System Disk Space
- Agedu – A Useful Tool for Tracking Down Wasted Disk Space in Linux
How to Find the Size of a Directory in Linux
1. To find out the disk usage summary of a /home/tecmint directory tree and each of its subdirectories. Enter the command as:
[[email protected]]# du /home/tecmint 40 /home/tecmint/downloads 4 /home/tecmint/.mozilla/plugins 4 /home/tecmint/.mozilla/extensions 12 /home/tecmint/.mozilla 12 /home/tecmint/.ssh 689112 /home/tecmint/Ubuntu-12.10 689360 /home/tecmint
The output of the above command displays the number of disk blocks in the /home/tecmint directory along with its sub-directories.
How to Find the Directory Size in Human Readable Format
2. Using the “-h” option with the “du” command provides results in “Human Readable Format“. This means you can see sizes in Bytes, Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes, etc.
[[email protected]]# du -h /home/tecmint 40K /home/tecmint/downloads 4.0K /home/tecmint/.mozilla/plugins 4.0K /home/tecmint/.mozilla/extensions 12K /home/tecmint/.mozilla 12K /home/tecmint/.ssh 673M /home/tecmint/Ubuntu-12.10 674M /home/tecmint
How to Find Total Size of a Directory in Linux
3. To get the summary of a grand total disk usage size of a directory uses the option “-s” as follows.
[[email protected]]# du -sh /home/tecmint 674M /home/tecmint
4. Using the “-a” flag with the “du” command displays the disk usage of all the files and directories.
[[email protected]]# du -a /home/tecmint 4 /home/tecmint/.bash_logout 12 /home/tecmint/downloads/uploadprogress-1.0.3.1.tgz 24 /home/tecmint/downloads/Phpfiles-org.tar.bz2 40 /home/tecmint/downloads 12 /home/tecmint/uploadprogress-1.0.3.1.tgz 4 /home/tecmint/.mozilla/plugins 4 /home/tecmint/.mozilla/extensions 12 /home/tecmint/.mozilla 4 /home/tecmint/.bashrc 689108 /home/tecmint/Ubuntu-12.10/ubuntu-12.10-server-i386.iso 689112 /home/tecmint/Ubuntu-12.10 689360 /home/tecmint
5. Using the “-a” flag along with “-h” displays disk usage of all files and folders in a human-readable format. The below output is easier to understand as it shows the files in Kilobytes, Megabytes, etc.
[[email protected]]# du -ah /home/tecmint 4.0K /home/tecmint/.bash_logout 12K /home/tecmint/downloads/uploadprogress-1.0.3.1.tgz 24K /home/tecmint/downloads/Phpfiles-org.tar.bz2 40K /home/tecmint/downloads 12K /home/tecmint/uploadprogress-1.0.3.1.tgz 4.0K /home/tecmint/.mozilla/plugins 4.0K /home/tecmint/.mozilla/extensions 12K /home/tecmint/.mozilla 4.0K /home/tecmint/.bashrc 673M /home/tecmint/Ubuntu-12.10/ubuntu-12.10-server-i386.iso 673M /home/tecmint/Ubuntu-12.10 674M /home/tecmint
6. Find out the disk usage of a directory tree with its subtree in Kilobyte blocks. Use the “-k” (displays size in 1024 bytes units).
[[email protected]]# du -k /home/tecmint 40 /home/tecmint/downloads 4 /home/tecmint/.mozilla/plugins 4 /home/tecmint/.mozilla/extensions 12 /home/tecmint/.mozilla 12 /home/tecmint/.ssh 689112 /home/tecmint/Ubuntu-12.10 689360 /home/tecmint
7. To get the summary of disk usage of directory tree along with its subtrees in Megabytes (MB) only. Use the option “-mh” as follows. The “-m” flag counts the blocks in MB units and “-h” stands for human-readable format.
[[email protected]]# du -mh /home/tecmint 40K /home/tecmint/downloads 4.0K /home/tecmint/.mozilla/plugins 4.0K /home/tecmint/.mozilla/extensions 12K /home/tecmint/.mozilla 12K /home/tecmint/.ssh 673M /home/tecmint/Ubuntu-12.10 674M /home/tecmint
8. The “-c” flag provides a grand total usage disk space at the last line. If your directory is taken 674MB space, then the last last two lines of the output would be.
[[email protected]]# du -ch /home/tecmint 40K /home/tecmint/downloads 4.0K /home/tecmint/.mozilla/plugins 4.0K /home/tecmint/.mozilla/extensions 12K /home/tecmint/.mozilla 12K /home/tecmint/.ssh 673M /home/tecmint/Ubuntu-12.10 674M /home/tecmint 674M total
How to Exclude Files with du Command
9. The below command calculates and displays the disk usage of all files and directories, but excludes the files that match the given pattern. The below command excludes the “.txt” files while calculating the total size of a directory. So, this way you can exclude any file formats by using the flag “-–exclude“. See the output there is no txt files entry.
[[email protected]]# du -ah --exclude="*.txt" /home/tecmint 4.0K /home/tecmint/.bash_logout 12K /home/tecmint/downloads/uploadprogress-1.0.3.1.tgz 24K /home/tecmint/downloads/Phpfiles-org.tar.bz2 40K /home/tecmint/downloads 12K /home/tecmint/uploadprogress-1.0.3.1.tgz 4.0K /home/tecmint/.bash_history 4.0K /home/tecmint/.bash_profile 4.0K /home/tecmint/.mozilla/plugins 4.0K /home/tecmint/.mozilla/extensions 12K /home/tecmint/.mozilla 4.0K /home/tecmint/.bashrc 24K /home/tecmint/Phpfiles-org.tar.bz2 4.0K /home/tecmint/geoipupdate.sh 4.0K /home/tecmint/.zshrc 120K /home/tecmint/goaccess-0.4.2.tar.gz.1 673M /home/tecmint/Ubuntu-12.10/ubuntu-12.10-server-i386.iso 673M /home/tecmint/Ubuntu-12.10 674M /home/tecmint
How to Find Directory Usage By Modification Time
10. Display the disk usage based on a modification of time, use the flag “–time” as shown below.
[[email protected]]# du -ha --time /home/tecmint 4.0K 2012-10-12 22:32 /home/tecmint/.bash_logout 12K 2013-01-19 18:48 /home/tecmint/downloads/uploadprogress-1.0.3.1.tgz 24K 2013-01-19 18:48 /home/tecmint/downloads/Phpfiles-org.tar.bz2 40K 2013-01-19 18:48 /home/tecmint/downloads 12K 2013-01-19 18:32 /home/tecmint/uploadprogress-1.0.3.1.tgz 4.0K 2012-10-13 00:11 /home/tecmint/.bash_history 4.0K 2012-10-12 22:32 /home/tecmint/.bash_profile 0 2013-01-19 18:32 /home/tecmint/xyz.txt 0 2013-01-19 18:32 /home/tecmint/abc.txt 4.0K 2012-10-12 22:32 /home/tecmint/.mozilla/plugins 4.0K 2012-10-12 22:32 /home/tecmint/.mozilla/extensions 12K 2012-10-12 22:32 /home/tecmint/.mozilla 4.0K 2012-10-12 22:32 /home/tecmint/.bashrc 24K 2013-01-19 18:32 /home/tecmint/Phpfiles-org.tar.bz2 4.0K 2013-01-19 18:32 /home/tecmint/geoipupdate.sh 4.0K 2012-10-12 22:32 /home/tecmint/.zshrc 120K 2013-01-19 18:32 /home/tecmint/goaccess-0.4.2.tar.gz.1 673M 2013-01-19 18:51 /home/tecmint/Ubuntu-12.10/ubuntu-12.10-server-i386.iso 673M 2013-01-19 18:51 /home/tecmint/Ubuntu-12.10 674M 2013-01-19 18:52 /home/tecmint
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Thanks.. Its really useful…
thanks a ton :)
Helpful
Hi Ravi,
Can you please help me with a command which can provide the Disk I/O Limit.
Please Note that, i am asking for the Disk I/O limit not the current io rate given by iostat.
Regards,
Manoj Rana
very handy. this helped me free up my disk space.
helpful tips. thank you.
Thank you for this. It is very helpful to me! I appreciate you sharing your knowledge.
another nice option I found very handsome:
du -h –max-depth=1
yeah :)
thanks this is what i was looking for.
Is there a way to only include certain types of files.
For example, something like:
du -ah –include=”*.php” /home/tecmint
PS: That’s a very helpful post – thanks for sharing!
You can run any command that gives you results in linux/unix by piping it through a grep command. So all you need to accomplish your task is something simple like du -ah | grep php. It would not accomplish your task perfectly since you would get files with php in the name as well but you would dig up all the .php files.