Tue 15 Aug 2006
Linux - Find large directories
Posted by Josh under Linux -Use this simple command to find large directories. To find directories over 1GB
[root@localhost]# du -h / | grep ^[0-9.]*G
or
[root@localhost]#find / -type d -size +1G (This one was provided in a comment by Emme)
Click to play tutorial:
To find directories over 10GB and sort the output with the largest directories on top
[root@localhost]# du -h / | grep ^[1-9][0-9][0-9.]*G | sort -rn
To find directories over 200GB
[root@localhost]# du -h / | grep ^[2-9][0-9][0-9][0-9.]*G
| du - h | Lists directory sizes in human readable format |
| / | Tells the du command to search the / (root) directory. It could easily be another directory such as /home/ or /var/log/ |
| | | The | or pipe symbol sends the output of the “du -h /” command to the following command. |
| grep | Grep searches through the output looking for strings matching the following regular expression. |
| ^[1-9][0-9][0-9.]*G | A regular expression^ Represents the start of the string
[1-9] Represents digits 1-9 [0-9] Represents digits 0-9 [0-9.] Represents digits 0-9 or . (the “dot” character is a special * Represents the previous expression ([0-9.]) Zero or more times. G Represents the capital letter G. When du outputs data in human |
| | | The Pipe symbol again. This time it is used to send output to the sort command. |
| sort -rn | This command sorts the output from the other commands with the largest directories on top. |










July 31st, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! cywwuykwizpe
June 16th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Thanks for this! I was looking for an easy way to pick out the largest directories to see where all my space had gone. Glad I found this post.
September 25th, 2008 at 10:06 am
your idea is good, but it would skip a directory that is 1 TB large
Ciao,
Emme
September 25th, 2008 at 10:08 am
You should try with find:
# find / -type d -size +1G
September 25th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
emme,
Good point and thanks for sharing another way!
Josh
October 7th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Hi!
I want to improve my SQL experience.
I red that many SQL resources and would like to
read more about SQL for my position as mysql database manager.
What can you recommend?
Thanks,
Werutz
October 21st, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Thnx very interesting.