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Systems & Data Center · Foundational

du

The Linux disk usage command that totals space consumed by files and directories.

Definition

du walks a directory tree and sums file sizes; -s summarizes and -h prints human-readable values. It is used to locate which directories are consuming space.

Example

du -sh /var/log/* | sort -h lists the largest items in /var/log.

Exam tip

df answers 'how full is the filesystem'; du answers 'what is using the space'.

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