The Unix du Command Under Linux

One of my favorite Linux commands
is the du command.

Here's an article:

The du Command

Why do I like the
du command?
Because it tells me
if I'm being a disk
hog. That's why.

Also, it helps me
to identify disk hog
directories.

As mentioned in the article,
there's a command that will
give you a summary on a specific
directory. Here it is:

du -hs

Note that you have to have permissions
on all the directories below this current
directory or you end up getting a lot of
goofy error messages.

Perhaps the quickest and easiest way to
get around the goofy error messages is
to login as root.

Note that the above command will only
give you one line of output.

Here's an input and output example:

$ du -hs mary
363M mary
$

Note that the final dollar sign is
my prompt coming back.

In this case, I'm being told that
the directory called mary
has used up 363 megabytes of
storage.

Ed Abbott