CertiGuide to A+ (A+ 4 Real)  9  Chapter 5: The Linux Operating System       9  Command Line Functions And Administrative Utilities            9  Disk Space Monitoring Commands

df - Report Filesystem Disk Space Usage 1 Process Management

With this command, the system administrator can find out how much disk space is being used in any directory. An example of output, looking at the directory temp:

du temp

248 temp/xine-ui-0.9.16/src/Imlib-light

8 temp/xine-ui-0.9.16/src/aaui/.deps

12 temp/xine-ui-0.9.16/src/aaui

16 temp/xine-ui-0.9.16/src/dfb/.deps

20 temp/xine-ui-0.9.16/src/dfb

1328 temp/xine-ui-0.9.16/src

116 temp/xine-ui-0.9.16/readline/.deps

372 temp/xine-ui-0.9.16/readline/.libs

492 temp/xine-ui-0.9.16/readline

1824 temp/xine-ui-0.9.16

54552 temp/openoffice

12992 temp/soyo

16 temp/screem-0.4.1/helpers/CVS

24 temp/screem-0.4.1/helpers

16 temp/screem-0.4.1/include/CVS

172 temp/screem-0.4.1/include

The numbers are in one K byte increments. A very useful version of this command is:

du -aS /home |grep ^....[0-9]

Which would show all files in the /home directory that are larger than 50 MB. This is a useful tool for the system administrator to monitor file space usage and to be able to target files that would be the best candidates for deletion if free disk space was at a critically low level.

df - Report Filesystem Disk Space Usage 1 Process Management