How to find size of directory in linux

How to find size of directory in linux

Commands to know:

To find out the size of a directory, we will use ‘du’ command. du stands for disk usage.

Syntax:

du  <option>  <filename>

du  <option>  --files0-from=F

for ex see log directory:

du /var/log

you can use du -h to see files size in human readable format

du -k for kilo bytes

du -m for megabytes 

1. To find which sub-directories consume how much disk size.

 du -h --max-depth=1 | sort -hr

sort -hr to display o/p in descending order

you can change the value of --max-depth=x

x= 0,1,2  etc

 To display the disk usage of all items including files and directories, use -a flag.

ex:

du -ah /var/log

2. display the size of multiple directories at once as shown below.

du <directory1> <directory2>

3. to check the total disk space used by a particular directory, use the -s flag.

du -sh /var/log

Here, -s flag indicates summary.

4.  for multiple directories summary use

du -sh /var/log  /etc

5. To display the grand total of directories, add -c flag with du -sh command.

du -csh  /var/log  /etc

du -csh /var/log  /

6. To display only the grand total of the given directory including all  the sub-directories, use ‘grep’ command with ‘du’ command like below.

du -sch /var/log | grep total

7. You might want to exclude certain type of files. The following command will display the size of the current directory including its sub-directories, but it will exclude the size of all .mp4 files.

du -ch  --exclude='.*mp4' | grep total

8. For more details about ‘du’ command, check the man pages.

man du