Why do du's subdirectory values not sum up to total?

Question

I'm trying to use du to investigate disk usage in a directory like so:

du -hd1 | sort -rh

This gives me a list that starts as follows

61G     .
7.9G    ./A
5.1G    ./B
2.7G    ./.C
1.6G    ./.D
1.2G    ./.E
1.2G    ./F
850M    ./.G
724M    ./H
666M    ./I
281M    ./J
249M    ./.K
150M    ./.L

The rest of the list sums up to less than 1GB and there are no large files directly contained in that directory:

ls -Slh
total 1.8M
...

What is the source of the discrepancy between the total 61GB and the sum of less than 25GB of the directory sums?

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 06 '15 at 10:48

8

The calls above miss large hidden files. Here is the result with du -a

du -ahd1 .  | sort -rh | head
61G     .
38G     ./.xsession-errors
7.9G    ./A
5.1G    ./B
...

answered Mar 06 '15 at 10:48

Thomas Kahle

273

Also ls -Slh doesn't count hidden files in "total" (add -a) and counts all hard links to a same files so can't be used for disk usage. – Stéphane Chazelas Mar 06 '15 at 11:53
Large .xsession-errors files seem to be a fun topic in their own... – Thomas Kahle Mar 06 '15 at 13:10

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 06 '15 at 10:42

0

As I understand it, du calculates the whole subtree usage, and option -d1 only prints data up to the first hierarchie level. Your ls calculates only the first level.

answered Mar 06 '15 at 10:42

Janis

14,222

Thanks, you got me on the right track. I should use du -ahd1 | sort -rh to include files, or use -a on the ls. – Thomas Kahle Mar 06 '15 at 10:46

score -1 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 06 '15 at 14:54

-1

if you just want one total;

# du -ms

edited Mar 06 '15 at 14:54

Archemar

31,554

answered Mar 06 '15 at 14:32

Snarkist

1

Why do du's subdirectory values not sum up to total?

3 Answers3