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Locate Large Files and Directories

Finding Large Directories

To find large directories, use the du command and sort the output.

For example, to output the 10 largest directories in /var, sorted in ascending size order, use the following command:

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du -ko /var

To avoid crossing file system boundaries, that is, to see the directory usage in / but not in the other mounted files systems (/var, /opt, and so on), add the d option to the du command:

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du -kod /var

Another super useful tool is ncdu. An ncurses disk usage viewer that provides a more user-friendly interface for navigating through directories and their sizes.

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ncdu /

Finding Large Files

To find large files, use the find command and sort the output.

  • Example 1: To find all plain files (not block, character, symbolic links, and so on) in a file system larger than 200,000 512-byte blocks (approximately 100 Mbytes) and sort on field 7 (file size) while numerically ignoring leading blanks, do this:
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find / -size +200000 -type f -ls
  • Example 2: To find all plain files (not block, character, symbolic links, and so on) in a /var file system larger than 1,000 512-byte blocks (approximately 500 Kbytes) and sort on field 7 (file size) while numerically ignoring leading blanks, do this:
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find /var -size +1000 -type f -ls