How to find the largest directories or largest files?

Question

Under Linux, I'm looking for a command to list the largest file and/or the largest directories under a directory.

The most useful tool I've found is xdiskusage (http://xdiskusage.sourceforge.net) This shows graphically where the files are - by size. Great tool! (and it works directly with X11) — jcoppens, Apr 20 '15 at 21:31
How this is duplicated of some question which has been closed as off-topic? Doesn't make sense. — kenorb, Apr 20 '15 at 22:08

score 99 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 20 '15 at 21:26

99

A utility called ncdu will give you the information you are looking for.

sudo apt-get install ncdu

On OS X, it can be installed using Homebrew:

brew install ncdu

edited Apr 20 '15 at 21:26

Mathias Bynens

2,471

answered Mar 11 '14 at 12:38

David Pratt

1,091

3

+1 I'd never heard of this one before - worked great on the Mac too. – Andrew E Nov 04 '14 at 02:24
1

This is a much nicer solution than both of the higher answers. – AlexLordThorsen Jul 22 '15 at 21:21
2

This is mind-blowing. Suggest this over all other answers! – Allen Gingrich Aug 07 '15 at 20:32
Fyi, this is an ncurses (text-based UI) application. So, no need to extensively discuss CLI parameters and whatnot; just install it and execute ncdu in the directory you'd like to analyze. – rinogo Dec 01 '20 at 18:19
On CentOS, you can use this to install a repo containing ncdu: sudo yum install epel-release – Rocket Apr 06 '22 at 17:20
Great tool. This should be the accepted answer. – Martin Sep 27 '22 at 14:12
I always forget what this tool is called then spend ages searching the web for this post. Finally bookmarked it! – devklick Feb 27 '23 at 11:29

score 42 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 20 '21 at 06:24

42

Following command shows you one level of directories and their sizes

du --max-depth=1 /path | sort -r -k1,1n

If one of them really sticks out (the last one on the list is the largest due to sort -r), then you re-run the command on that directory, and keep going until you find the offending directory / file.

If all you want is the ten biggest files just do

find /home -type f -exec du -s {} \; | sort -r -k1,1n | head

edited Mar 20 '21 at 06:24

Welz

207
1
4
17

answered Apr 28 '11 at 13:54

Marcin

838

biggest number ends up at the bottom for me no matter if I add sort -r or not. Is there a way to get the biggest number at the top? – squarecandy Oct 27 '13 at 22:17
You must indicate to sort which column you want to sort by, and that it's numeric (not alphanumeric). That's what -k1,1rn would do. By default sort does uses alphanumeric sort on first column. – Marcin Oct 28 '13 at 12:45
Yes, it's sorting correctly with that, but it's in ascending order low to high numbers no matter if I include sort or sort -r. Am I misunderstanding how the -r works? I guess it's not a big deal. Your example is very helpful and got me the info I needed. – squarecandy Oct 28 '13 at 16:17
3

With the sort I have (sort (GNU coreutils) 8.13 in Ubuntu 12.04.3) the option -r does not work if -n immediately follows -k (-k1,1n). This order of options works: sort -rnk1,1. – pabouk - Ukraine stay strong Dec 01 '13 at 08:26
Great answer. On OS X the option is -d 1 instead of --max-depth 1. What is also useful is -m which then reports in megabyte instead of block count. – freespace Apr 18 '21 at 11:32

Brent Worden · Accepted Answer · 2023-09-22T12:22:54.377

37

From any directory:

du -a 2>/dev/null | sort -n -r

edited Sep 22 '23 at 12:22

answered Apr 28 '11 at 13:04

Brent Worden

518

4

this shows individual files, but the question is about directories as well – knocte Feb 07 '17 at 06:12
du with no arguments summarizes disk usage by directories. du with -a produces the same directory information and includes the disk usage for individual files as well. – Brent Worden Feb 07 '17 at 13:47
2

can't run sort when you're out of space :=( – Jonathan Henson Apr 10 '17 at 23:10
This prints a lot of du: cannot read directory './snap/core20/2015/var/cache/ldconfig': Permission denied when ran from root dir – Anton Duzenko Sep 22 '23 at 11:22
You can redirect stderr to /dev/null to avoid those errors. https://stackoverflow.com/a/44758924/633150 – Brent Worden Sep 22 '23 at 12:22

score 8 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 30 '14 at 05:36

8

Following command will return top 10 biggest files from given /path

du -a -h /path | sort -h -r | head -n 10

I like to use -h options for readability. Both du and sort need to have -h.

edited Jun 30 '14 at 05:36

Abhijeet Kasurde

163

answered Feb 12 '14 at 01:38

Jiang

181

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 28 '13 at 04:54

3

du -sk * | sort -nr | head -1

This will show the biggest directory/file in a directory in KB. Changing the head value will result in the top x files/directories.

answered Feb 28 '13 at 04:54

Sridharpp

39

score 2 · Answer 6 · edited Jun 30 '14 at 04:31

2

This post will help you well:

cd /path/to/some/where
du -a /var | sort -n -r | head -n 10
du -hsx * | sort -rh | head -10

edited Jun 30 '14 at 04:31

Abhijeet Kasurde

163

answered Dec 01 '13 at 05:33

Matz

301
1
4
9

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 05 '15 at 13:16

1

Use

ls -A | xargs -I artifact du -ms artifact | sort -nr

Optionally, you can add a pipe and use head -5

answered Mar 05 '15 at 13:16

Abhishek

11

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Apr 28 '11 at 13:00

0

Use du. Try this to order the result:

du | sort -n

answered Apr 28 '11 at 13:00

Heisenbug

693

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Mar 05 '15 at 13:09

Try the following one-liner (displays top-20 biggest files in the current directory):

ls -1Rs | sed -e "s/^ *//" | grep "^[0-9]" | sort -nr | head -n20

or with human readable sizes:

ls -1Rhs | sed -e "s/^ *//" | grep "^[0-9]" | sort -hr | head -n20

The second command to work on OSX/BSD properly (as sort doesn't have -h), you need to install sort from coreutils.

So these aliases are useful to have in your rc files (every time when you need it):

alias big='du -ah . | sort -rh | head -20'
alias big-files='ls -1Rhs | sed -e "s/^ *//" | grep "^[0-9]" | sort -hr | head -n20'

score -5 · Answer 10 · edited Oct 15 '13 at 18:02

-5

du -sh /path * | sort -nr | grep G

G for GIG (to weed out smaller) files/directories

edited Oct 15 '13 at 18:02

Kevin Panko

7,366

answered Oct 15 '13 at 17:21

hutch

1

This lists all the files and folders, showing the size. It doesn't sort the size by the K, M or G's worth of bytes, unless you GREP it as you shown – Canadian Luke Oct 15 '13 at 17:31
Also it will find anything with a G in the file's name. – Kevin Panko Oct 15 '13 at 18:03

How to find the largest directories or largest files?

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