How in the Tech

How to sort folders by size in Linux/Unix

By Adam Myers ⋅ July 6, 2006 ⋅ Tags: Linux

In my day to day profession I am often tasked to find out where all the storage space has gone on a system. For example, I need to figure out which user(s) are using more than their fair share on the mail server. Knowing that the mail folder resides under /home, I need a quick and easy way to list all of its subfolders sorted by size.

Thankfully, Linux makes this a rather trivial process – assuming you know the right command and appropriate flags:

du –max-depth=1 /home/ | sort -n -r

In Unix, it is equally similar:

du -sk /home/* | sort -n -r

Either command, when executed, will dump something similar to the following:

1234881 /home/
23441 /home/adam
19244 /home/support
13960 /home/admin
…

..on your screen. Now, you can get to cracking those knuckles on your top spacepigs!