[Cialug] space by directory

[Thomas Kula]

On Wed, Sep 05, 2012 at 01:51:48PM -0500, murraymckee at wellsfargo.com wrote:
> We're running Linux under IBM zVM and I have a problem.  One of our mount points is running low on space.  I can do "df -h" which tells me which mount point is short on space, but I can't seem to find a way to look at the directories under the mount point to figure out which one is using up more than its share of space.
> 
> I hoping there is something that I can cd to the mount point and it will list the space used by all of the directories underneath it, recursively.  I just want a list of the directories immediately below where I am, but with all the space used in that directory or any subdirectory under it.  
> 
> Is there anything like that?

Take a look at `du'. I tend to do something like:

 cd /mountpoint
 du -sxk *	    # The -s says "just sum up everything under each argument"
                    # The -x says "don't cross mountpoints" (useful if you have
		    #  other mountpoints mounted under this mount point)
                    # The -k says "display in kilobytes"

Fancier du will have the -h option, which shows things in 
"human readable" format (487 MB, 3.6GB, etc. ). Ancient
crufty du won't have either -s or -h. Consult your man
page.

For directories with lots of things, I tend to do:

 du -sxk * | sort -k 1nr

To sort the output, largest to smallest. Throw a 
'head' in there if you want to see the top N things.

As always, more info in the man pages.

-- 
Thomas L. Kula | kula at tproa.net | http://kula.tproa.net/
Mathom House by the Cloisters, The People's Republic of Ames