24

I need to find out what's contributing to the disk usage on a specific filesystem (/dev/sda2):

$ df -h /
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2              96G   82G  9.9G  90% /

I can't just do du -csh / because I have many other filesystems mounted underneath /, some of which are huge and slow:

$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2              96G   82G  9.9G  90% /
/dev/sdb1             5.2T  3.7T  1.3T  76% /disk3
/dev/sda1              99M   18M   76M  20% /boot
tmpfs                  16G  4.0K   16G   1% /dev/shm
nfshome.XXX.net:/home/userA
                      5.3T  1.6T  3.5T  32% /home/userA
nfshome.XXX.net:/home/userB
                      5.3T  1.6T  3.5T  32% /home/userB

How can I retrieve disk usage only on /dev/sda2?

None of these work:

  • Attempt 1:

    $ du -csh /dev/sda2
0       /dev/sda2
0       total

  • Attempt 2:

    $ cd /dev/sda2/
cd: not a directory: /dev/sda2/
Improve this question
1
  • Maybe I am missing something, but why doesn't the Used column give you what you are looking for? Commented Apr 11, 2017 at 13:44

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
31

Use the -x (single file system) option:

du -cshx /

This instructs du to only consider directories of / which are on the same file system.

Improve this answer
4
  • Thanks Stephen. Not sure this works the way I understand it does (see this followup) Commented Apr 11, 2017 at 13:45
  • Note that the magic here is the -x option. The other options here, mirroring the OP approach, report in human-readable numbers, and summarize the results, including a grand total. So for example, du -x / would give a full description of all files on the root file system. Commented Jul 31, 2021 at 17:03
  • The problème is that one would normally do du -x /* - to see what directory is using the most of the space of the root partition. How to exclude from this result the directories that are on a different filesystem? Commented Dec 5, 2022 at 6:55
  • @Andrei if you’re using GNU du, du -x --max-depth=1 /. Commented Dec 5, 2022 at 8:49
1

There are two options to solving your problem:

Using the option --exclude which makes du ignore the given path.

du --human-readable --exclude=/home

Using the option --one-file-system would tell du to not go into a different file system.

du --human-readable --one-file-system /
Improve this answer
2
  • I have home on a different partition but when I use `du -hd1x ` the home directory is included. I use debian stretch. What do I misunderstand in "one file system"? Commented Nov 26, 2018 at 22:56
  • To find directories containing a large size, I would recommend adding --max-depth=1: du --human-readable --one-file-system --max-depth=1 Commented Sep 24, 2021 at 7:50
0

On some Linux distro you could take advantage of ncdu.

To check your HOME folder:

$ ncdu ~
Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.