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du
Article Index
1. Name
2. Synopsis
3. Frequently used options
4. Examples

1. Name

du [man page] - estimate file space usage

2. Synopsis

du [OPTION]... [FILE]...
du [OPTION]... --files0-from=F

3. Frequently used options

-h, --human-readable
      print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)
-s, --summarize
      display only a total for each argument
--max-depth=N
      print the total for a directory (or file, with --all) only if it
      is  N  or  fewer  levels  below  the  command   line   argument;
      --max-depth=0 is the same as --summarize

4. Examples

du is abbreviation of "disk usage". This command tool reports usage by given directory. Lets suppose that we have this directory structure in /tmp: 
$ cd /tmp
$ mkdir -p dir1/dir2/dir3
$ tree dir1
du - create a example directories
By default du command traverse whole directory structure: 
$ du dir1
du command traverse whole directory structure
by option -s we instruct du command to print total just for given argument. In our case the argument is dir1. 
$ du -s dir1
instruct du command to print total
We can do the same by --max-depth=N: 
$ du --max-depth=0 dir1
du max-depth prefix Lets se how it works on /var directory: 
# du -s /var
du - print total for whole directory
# du --max-depth=1 /var
du max-depth prefix 1
If its hard for you to read size in bytes you can instruct du to display size in human readable format: 
# du -h --max-depth=1 /var
du command in human readable format