Linux du command

Updated: 04/26/2017 by Computer Hope

• About du
• du syntax
• du examples
• Related commands
• Linux and Unix commands help

About du
du estimates and displays the disk space used by files.

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

du [OPTION]... --files0-from=F

Options
-a, --all Write counts for all files, not just directories.
Print apparent sizes, rather than disk usage; although the apparent size is
--apparent-size usually smaller, it may be larger due to holes in ('sparse') files, internal
fragmentation, and indirect blocks.
Scale sizes by SIZE before printing them. For example, '-BM' prints sizes in
-B, --block-size=SIZE
units of 1,048,576 bytes. (See SIZE format below).
-b, --bytes Equivalent to '--apparent-size --block-size=1'.
-c, --total Display a grand total.
-D, --dereference-
Dereference only symlinks that are listed on the command line.
args
Summarize disk usage of the NUL-terminated file names specified in file F; If
--files0-from=F
F is "-" then read names from standard input.
-H Equivalent to --dereference-args (-D).
-h, --human- Print sizes in human readable format, rounding values and using abbreviations.
readable For example, "1K", "234M", "2G", etc.
--si Like -h, but use powers of 1000, not 1024.
-k Like --block-size=1K.
-l, --count-links Count sizes many times if hard-linked.
-m Like --block-size=1M.
-L, --dereference Dereference all symbolic links.
-P, --no-dereference Don't follow any symbolic links (this is the default).
-0, --null End each output line with 0 byte rather than newline.
-S, --separate-dirs Do not include size of subdirectories.
-s, --summarize Display only a total for each argument.
-x, --one-file-system Skip directories on different file systems.
-X, --exclude-
Exclude files that match any pattern in FILE.
from=FILE
--exclude=PATTERN Exclude files that match PATTERN.
Print the total for a directory (or file, with --all) only if it is N or fewer levels
-d, --max-depth=N below the command line argument; --max-depth=0 is the same as
--summarize.
Show time of the last modification of any file in the directory, or any of its
--time
subdirectories.
Show time as WORD instead of modification time: atime, access, use, ctime
--time=WORD
or status.
Show times using style STYLE: full-iso, long-iso, iso, or +FORMAT.
--time-style=STYLE
(FORMAT is interpreted like the format of 'date'.)
--help Display a help message and exit.
--version Output version information and exit.

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

Reports the size of each file in the current directory with the extension .txt. Below is an example of the
output:
8 file1.txt
8 file2.txt
10 file3.txt
2 file4.txt
8 file5.txt
8 file6.txt

du -shc *.txt

Display the same data, but in a "human-readable" size format, and display a grand total.
8.0K file1.txt
8.0K file2.txt
10.0K file3.txt
2.0K file4.txt
8.0K file5.txt
8.0K file6.txt
44.0K total