Linux du command can be used to find disk usage of files and directories. Here are some handy du commands on Ubuntu Linux (or any other Linux).
Find disk usage in block size
Find disk usage of file or directory (in –block-size, default is 1K usually). It is usually larger that actual file size.
$ du 10K_file1.out 12
disk usage in human readable format
$ du -h 10K_file1.out 12K 10K_file1.out
Find apparent disk usage
Print apparent sizes, rather than disk usage. The apparent size is usually smaller, but it may be larger due to holes in sparse files.
Smaller apparent size case:
$ du --apparent-size -h 10K_file1.out 10K 10K_file1.out
Larger apparent size case:
$ truncate --size 1M 1M_file_created_using_truncate.out $ du -h 1M_file_created_using_truncate.out 0 1M_file_created_using_truncate.out $ du --apparent-size -h 1M_file_created_using_truncate.out 1.0M 1M_file_created_using_truncate.out
Display count for all files
To display count of all files (inside directories):
$ du --all dir1 0 dir1/large 10240 dir1/file2.out 10244 dir1
