How to analyse disk usage in command line linux?

Question

du and df are nice, but I don't know how to filter the data they provide the way I do with SequoiaView. I would like to know which are the largest folders and the largest files in a glance.

Answer 1

Use some combination of the commands and options:

du --max-depth=1 2> /dev/null | sort -n -r | head -n20

to view only the largest few. If you'd like to use it a lot, then bind it to an alias, e.g. in bash by adding to ~/.bashrc

alias largest='du --max-depth=1 2> /dev/null | sort -n -r | head -n20'

Answer 2

You might also want to try the NCurses Disk Usage aka ncdu.

Use it like ncdu -x -q if you're invoking it remotely (e. g. via ssh) and ncdu -x otherwise.

ncdu 1.6 ~ Use the arrow keys to navigate, press ? for help
    --- /home/geek -----------------------------------------------------------------
       27.6MiB  /qm test 1 rework
      312.0kiB  /sidebar
       88.0kiB  /rackerhacker-MySQLTuner-perl-6add618
        8.0kiB  /.w3m
        4.0kiB  /.cache
    e   4.0kiB  /.ssh
      160.0kiB   ng.tar.gz
       76.0kiB   plowshare_1~svn1673-1_all.deb
        4.0kiB   .bashrc
        4.0kiB   .bash_history
        4.0kiB   .profile
        4.0kiB   .htoprc
        4.0kiB   .bash_logout
        0.0  B   .lesshst

This is available under Mac OS X too.

The following flags to the command line might be helpful:

-q Quiet mode, doesn't update the screen 10 times a second
   while scanning, reduces network bandwidth used

-x Don't cross filesystem borders (don't descend into a
   directory which is a mounted disk)

Thanks to Sorin Sbarnea.

Answer 3

You probably want xdu.

du -ax | xdu -n

There's also the more sophisticated KDE-based Filelight.