


I learned the -s flag for summary rather than the -c flag. There is a lot of information, and I really just want what is at the end, so I will pipe the disk usage command to tail. I can use du -ch /home/don to display every file and directory in my home directory. The -c option provides a grand total for disk usage at the last line. To look at your Downloads directory in a human-readable format, use the du -ah ~/Downloads command. geckodriver-v0.31.0-linu圆4.tar.gzĪs with most Linux commands, you can combine options. The result is 4.8 G(igabytes) which is a more useful number format for me. I want something more helpful to me so I add the switch for the human-readable format to my du -h /home/don/Downloads command. The numbers on the far left are the file sizes in bytes. I think there are some big files in my Downloads directory, so I enter du -a /home/don/Downloads to get a good look at that Downloads directory. What if I want a more meaningful number, and I want to drill down into the directories to see where the big files are on my system? Using du -a provides a quick recursive look at my storage system. This command lets me know I've got 11555168 bytes stored in my home directory.

It provides a readout of all files on your system and the directories they are stored in. The first option you could choose is du -a. Our latest Linux articles Display all files -apparent-size - prints apparent sizes rather than disk usageīe sure to check the du man page for a complete listing.-a - write counts for all files and not just directories.There are many options for the du command. This specific tool has several switches to give you the best possible snapshot of file storage and how much space they consume on your system. I always consult the man page for any utility. Like all Linux tools, du is very powerful, but knowing how to use it for your particular needs is helpful. This command line utility estimates file space usage. The easiest way to examine what's left for storage on your disk drive is the du command. Installing Steam and a few games can make storage management more critical. That's okay most of the time, but I began to explore gaming on Linux a couple of years ago. My laptop has a relatively small 250GB NVME drive. Knowing how much of your disk is being used by your files is an important consideration, no matter how much storage you have.
