Largest directory and/or file

Wanch · 08-20-2008, 05:40 AM

After search I found two commands to find the largest directory (in a directory) and the largest file.

Largest Directory

Code:

# du -ch --max-depth 2 /

which will output something like this:

Code:

27M /usr/include
24K /usr/X11R6
137M /usr/bin
37M /usr/sbin
19M /usr/libexec
2.3G /usr/local
3.7G /usr
60G /

You can change the dept and the dir to scan:

Code:

# du -ch --max-depth 1 /usr

which will output:

Code:

596M /usr/share
1.6M /usr/kerberos
550M /usr/lib
8.0K /usr/games
76K /usr/doc
12K /usr/etc
87M /usr/src
160K /usr/man
27M /usr/include
24K /usr/X11R6
138M /usr/bin
37M /usr/sbin
19M /usr/libexec
2.3G /usr/local
3.7G /usr
3.7G total

Largest File
This command is fairly simple and just lists recursively (all directories) files and then sorts them by size:

Code:

ls -lsR | sort -n

You can remove the "R" to remove the recursive function (which is a bit annoying):

Code:

ls -ls | sort -n

Which will output:

Code:

total 284
  4 drwx------  2 root  root   4096 Jul 28 09:59 portsentry/
  4 drwxr-xr-x  2 root  root   4096 Jul 28 09:57 proftpd/
  4 drwxr-xr-x  3 root  root   4096 Jun  2 13:04 profiles/
  4 drwxr-xr-x 52 root  root   4096 Aug 20 08:39 cpanel/
  4 drwxr-xr-x  5 named named  4096 Aug 20 06:03 named/
  4 lrwxrwxrwx  1 root  root     10 Jun  2 12:23 mail -> spool/mail/
  4 -rw-r--r--  1 root  root      5 Jul 28 09:57 proftpd.pid
  8 drwxrwxr-x  5 root  lock   4096 Aug 20 04:02 lock/
  8 drwxr-xr-x 12 root  root   4096 Aug 20 00:01 log/
  8 drwxr-xr-x 14 root  root   4096 Jun  2 13:32 spool/
  8 drwxr-xr-x 22 root  root   4096 Aug 20 05:45 run/
  8 drwxr-xr-x 22 root  root   4096 Aug  8 12:34 lib/
  8 drwxr-xr-x 25 root  root   4096 Jun 19 15:07 ./
  8 drwxr-xr-x 28 root  root   4096 Jul 28 09:57 ../
  8 drwxr-xr-x  2 root  root   4096 Jun  2 12:25 account/
  8 drwxr-xr-x  2 root  root   4096 Mar 17  2007 cvs/
  8 drwxr-xr-x  2 root  root   4096 Mar 29  2007 games/
  8 drwxr-xr-x  2 root  root   4096 Mar 29  2007 local/
  8 drwxr-xr-x  2 root  root   4096 Mar 29  2007 nis/
  8 drwxr-xr-x  2 root  root   4096 Mar 29  2007 opt/
  8 drwxr-xr-x  2 root  root   4096 Mar 29  2007 preserve/
  8 drwxr-xr-x  2 root  root   4096 May 19  2007 racoon/
  8 drwxr-xr-x  3 root  root   4096 Jun  2 12:25 db/
  8 drwxr-xr-x  3 root  root   4096 Jun  2 12:25 empty/
  8 drwxr-xr-x  3 root  root   4096 Jun  2 12:25 yp/
  8 drwxr-xr-x  8 root  root   4096 Jun  2 12:27 cache/
104 drwxrwxrwt  9 root  root  98304 Aug 20 08:38 tmp/

I thought I would share this with everyone.