www.LinuxHowtos.org howtos, tips&tricks and tutorials for linux

from small one page howto to huge articles all in one place

Other .linuxhowtos.org sites:toolsntoys.linuxhowtos.org
gentoo.linuxhowtos.org

poll results

Last additions:

using iotop to find disk usage hogs

words:

887

views:

195649

userrating:

average rating: 1.7 (102 votes) (1=very good 6=terrible)

May 25th. 2007:

Words

486

Views

252055

why adblockers are bad

Workaround and fixes for the current Core Dump Handling vulnerability affected kernels

words:

161

views:

140919

userrating:

average rating: 1.4 (42 votes) (1=very good 6=terrible)

April, 26th. 2006:

Words

Views

100783

New subdomain: toolsntoys.linuxhowtos.org

You are here: manpages

DU

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: September 2017
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

du - estimate file space usage

SYNOPSIS

du [,OPTION/]... [,FILE/]...
du [,OPTION/]... ,--files0-from=F/

DESCRIPTION

Summarize disk usage of the set of FILEs, recursively for directories.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

-0, --null: end each output line with NUL, not newline
-a, --all: write counts for all files, not just directories
--apparent-size: print apparent sizes, rather than disk usage; although the apparent size is usually smaller, it may be larger due to holes in ('sparse') files, internal fragmentation, indirect blocks, and the like
-B, --block-size=,SIZE/: scale sizes by SIZE before printing them; e.g., '-BM' prints sizes in units of 1,048,576 bytes; see SIZE format below
-b, --bytes: equivalent to '--apparent-size --block-size=,1/'
-c, --total: produce a grand total
-D, --dereference-args: dereference only symlinks that are listed on the command line
-d, --max-depth=,N/: print the total for a directory (or file, with --all) only if it is N or fewer levels below the command line argument; --max-depth=,0/ is the same as --summarize
--files0-from=,F/: summarize disk usage of the NUL-terminated file names specified in file F; if F is -, then read names from standard input
-H: equivalent to --dereference-args (-D)
-h, --human-readable: print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)
--inodes: list inode usage information instead of block usage
-k: like --block-size=,1K/
-L, --dereference: dereference all symbolic links
-l, --count-links: count sizes many times if hard linked
-m: like --block-size=,1M/
-P, --no-dereference: don't follow any symbolic links (this is the default)
-S, --separate-dirs: for directories do not include size of subdirectories
--si: like -h, but use powers of 1000 not 1024
-s, --summarize: display only a total for each argument
-t, --threshold=,SIZE/: exclude entries smaller than SIZE if positive, or entries greater than SIZE if negative
--time: show time of the last modification of any file in the directory, or any of its subdirectories
--time=,WORD/: show time as WORD instead of modification time: atime, access, use, ctime or status
--time-style=,STYLE/: show times using STYLE, which can be: full-iso, long-iso, iso, or +FORMAT; FORMAT is interpreted like in 'date'
-X, --exclude-from=,FILE/: exclude files that match any pattern in FILE
--exclude=,PATTERN/: exclude files that match PATTERN
-x, --one-file-system: skip directories on different file systems
--help: display this help and exit
--version: output version information and exit

Display values are in units of the first available SIZE from --block-size, and the DU_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. Otherwise, units default to 1024 bytes (or 512 if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set).

The SIZE argument is an integer and optional unit (example: 10K is 10*1024). Units are K,M,G,T,P,E,Z,Y (powers of 1024) or KB,MB,... (powers of 1000).

PATTERNS

PATTERN is a shell pattern (not a regular expression). The pattern ? matches any one character, whereas * matches any string (composed of zero, one or multiple characters). For example, *.o will match any files whose names end in .o. Therefore, the command

: du --exclude=aq*.oaq

will skip all files and subdirectories ending in .o (including the file .o itself).

AUTHOR

Written by Torbjorn Granlund, David MacKenzie, Paul Eggert, and Jim Meyering.

REPORTING BUGS

GNU coreutils online help: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report du translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.