Linux: Show Directory Size: du

To show size of a directory, use du command.

Find the Size of a Dir

# show dir size of current dir
du --si -s .

• --si is human readable format in metric unit. For example, M means megabyte (1000^2), not mebibyte (1024^2)
• -s means sum.

Find Size of All Top-Level Subdirs

# show size of current dir, human readable, 1st level dirs, sort by size.
du --si -d1 | sort -h

# show size of current dir, 1st level dirs, sort by size.
du -d1 | sort -n

Most Important Options

• -s → “sum”. Do not calculate size of subdirectories.
• -d n → calculate all size of subdirs to depth n. -d 1 would be all the first level subdirs.

Human readable forms. (kilo, mega, giga)

• -h → human readable form; in binary units.
• --si → human readable form; in metric units.

Specify your own units:

• -k → kibi bytes. (kibi = 2^10 = 1024) (default)
• -m → mibi bytes. (mibi = 2^20 = 1048576)
• -B 1000 → kilo bytes.
• -B 1000000 → mega bytes.

When using “sort”, use -n to sort by number, use -h to sort human readable form of number.