du

summary

This subchapter looks at du, a UNIX (and Linux) command.

du is used to display usage.

du

This subchapter looks at du, a UNIX (and Linux) command.

du is used to display usage.

display usage

Use the -a option to see an entry for each file in the file hierarchy.

$ du -a

Note that if you run this from root, you will get a large report of every single file on all of the mounted hard drives. best to run it from a subdirectory.

total

Use the -c option to see a grand total.

$ du -c

kilobytes

Use the -k option to see the results listed in kilobytes.

$ du -k

You can use the alias command to modify the du so that it always displays the file information in kilobytes.

$ alias du=du -k

If you need to use the unmodified version of this now aliased command, simply type a slash ( \ ) in front of the du command.

$ \du

A better alternative is to use an alternate spelling, such as duk for your alias. Any scripts that rely on the unmodified version of an aliased du are likely to fail or produce strange results because of your alias.

$ alias duk=du -k

other

In June 2009, Ken Milberg named this command as one of the Top 50 universal UNIX commands at this web page Top 50 Universal INIX commands. Note that this web page requires agreeing to be spammed before you can read it.