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:: New Users :: Beginners Linux Guide :: Finding out how much space a dir takes up

If you do an ls -l in any directory, the subdirectories give a zero byte value. This is a little bit offputting, as for example in the root directory /. all the directories show up a zero usage. A command exists for us to find out how much space these directories actually use, but it has nothing to do with ls.

From the command line, try typing du -c , that will give you the usage on that particular directory. Du stands for Disk Usage, and -c is not the only switch that the program can accept. Try typin 'man du', and come up with the various options that are available. An interesting one to try is du -ch, which gives the space, and lists the space in human interpretable sizes, such as K, and Megs, rather than bytes.

You may find the following helpful:
Basic Shell Commands

About the author, Owen Kelly.

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