Linux Crash Course - The df and du Commands

In the Linux Crash Course series, we'll go over one important foundational Linux topic each episode. This series includes tutorials, demonstrations, and more! In this episode, we'll take a look at how we can determine how much storage we have remaining, and we'll also tackle how to determine which directories are using up the most space.
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Time Codes
00:00 - Intro
01:06 - Spin up your very own cloud Linux server with Linode
02:14 - Basic usage of the df command
02:52 - Viewing "human readable" output with df
03:42 - Understanding the output of the df command
05:41 - Viewing filesystem types with the df command
06:39 - Excluding filesystem types from the output of the df command (such as tmpfs)
10:31 - Basic usage of the df command
11:45 - Viewing "human readable" output with the du command
12:10 - Using the "max depth" option with the du command
14:08 - Viewing "summary" information with the du command
14:41 - Executing the du command against multiple directories
15:49 - Viewing the total size of multiple directories with the du command
16:47 - Jay's favorite usage of the du command
17:48 - Quick mention of the ncdu command
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[@soubinan]

Thank you for this video :) There is also the so useful du command with the threshold option to filter only bigger files `du -h -t 100M /tmp/*` for example to show only files greater than 100MB in /tmp

[@LearnLinuxTV]

Thanks for the tip!

[@davelamont]

Your videos are always teaching me more about Linux. Keep em coming and I will keep watching and learning. Thanks for all you do.

[@mason8714]

love learning new things from this channel - you are doing a great job Jay

[@anandus3174]

I'm a linux admin who always use du -sch * inside /var/log to find disk consuming logs. I didn't know the meaning of s & c switches 😅😅

[@d00dEEE]

Ha ha, I do the same thing. I've got a bunch of commands that I use with switches that I just type from habit, probably looked them up decades ago, but forgot since then. 'netstat -tunlp' and 'ps -ealf' come to mind right away. I think I'll go man them now.

[@anandus3174]

@@d00dEEE yup. I use netstat -ntpl ps aux 😅😅

[@JayantBB78]

Wow. Another right to point, no nonsense video. Love your videos. Keep posting.

[@bw_merlin]

This was super awesome and super helpful. Please keep this kind of content up.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

5:00 actually gibibytes. You need “-H” for decimal multiples, “-h” for binary.

[@HopliteSecurity]

This was a game changer! Thank you so much for this amazing video and keep up the fantastic work ❤

[@Enes-ho2rb]

This is really awesome tutorial. Great work man.

[@DL-xf3ur]

Thanks as always Jay. Excellent.

[@auto117666]

Good stuff. I always learn something new about these 40 year old command line utils from this channel. :)

[@BDBD16]

30 Years as Linux was released 1991, if we are talking true Unix, try more like 50 years.

[@shallex5744]

@@BDBD16 possibly older than 30 if the commands were made for the GNU system before Linux came along

[@BDBD16]

@@shallex5744 I see what you did there you little daemon.

[@shallex5744]

@@BDBD16 i don't think i did anything

[@srb1855]

excellent and very informative video - particularly the exclude option for df ... and the max depth option for du. 👍

[@ArniesTech]

Thanks as always for the informative content 💪🙏

[@TheInternetFan]

so grateful for this video. I had a '/' directory that was 93% full. Gave the : du -sm / and it was hanging. I guess --max-depth 1 could have helped navigate the filesys in order to pin point which subdirectory was too heavy. thank you for teaching me this switch.

[@omaralhalboosi2713]

You are amazing sir, thank you from my heart for making it so clear and understandable.. all respect to you and the family from Chicago 🇺🇸

[@MT-er6tl]

Maksunnserjf

[@chillnacho]

I love this crash course series.

[@JohnBortins]

Outstanding!

[@sairak3514]

Thank you so much!

[@ciobysv23]

Regarding the output of the df -hT command is worth to mention that when using ext4, as the filesystem by default, 5% of the blocks will be reserved for the super-user, to avoid fragmentation and if we sum the output of the columns Used + Avail the value will be different from what's displayed in the Size column. (445 GB in this case) and the remaining 23 GB up to the displayed size of 468 GB is in fact the 5% reserved space. This reservation can be adjusted with the help of the tune2fs command.

[@gauravsrivastava17]

Learning Linux will be so easy with these videos

[@mihai6564]

thanks for the video

[@voodooyam]

one useful flag in du is the --time It shows the time of the last modification to any file in the directory or subdirectory that you run it against.

[@undergrounder]

Thank you!

[@anthonychaple3031]

Great video man 👍🏻. Hey would you consider making a video simulating the RHCSA exam? This series would compliment that perfectly and honestly all other videos i can find simulating the RHCSA exam are very low quality, i think one from you would help a lot of people. Thanks beforehand

[@NekoiNemo]

Thank you for mentioning ncdu. For some reason it's not mentioned often, especially to new users, and it's so much better for interactive use than just plain du. I wish somebody has told me about it years ago when i just started using linux

[@carlallison9530]

Great teaching as usual the way you have mastery of the command line and how you move and insert different commands is a teaching within its self. please consider and do a teaching on how you move letters and commands and insert different commands with ease because to a newbie it's difficult to understand how you do what you do.

[@fordprefect7779]

Thanks!

[@SteveMacSticky]

thanks very much

[@asdf51501]

Good commands to know.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

11:58 Actually mebibytes. And unlike the df command, you add “--si” to ask for decimal units. (Calling them “SI” units is misleading, since the binary multipliers are also defined by SI.)

[@wanak5795]

thank you you are great teacher

[@LearnLinuxTV]

Thank you! 😃

[@d00dEEE]

Thanks for the reminder about ncdu! I was thinking "what's that tui-based du that sorts by size?" for most of the video, but couldn't remember what it was called.

[@10lauset]

.. Cheers to you. ..

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

15:28 And here’s another feature of using du on multiple directories: what happens when one directory is contained within another? For example, my current directory contains source code for some programming project. It also has a .git subdirectory containing the Git commit history for that project. If I do du -ks .

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

that will show me the total usage for the entire directory. But if I do du -ks .git . now something wonderful happens: it first reports the usage for the .git subdirectory, then it shows the usage for the source directory _minus that of the .git subdirectory_ . So I see just the size of the current source tree, not including the commit history.

[@janis.eglitis]

There's also a "gdu" command which you can install `sudo apt install gdu`.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

8:07 You can specify the -x option multiple times, if you want to exclude more than one filesystem type from the listing. For example, on my Debian system, I have a filesystem of type “devtmpfs” mounted on /dev.

[@benmcwhirter4566]

Thanks. I just yeeted 24G from my home directory that I didn't no was there.

[@fazzanimohsen320]

gooooooooood

[@BobDoe_69]

nice

[@user-ge3fv1qj4u]

I always facing problem of getting / of getting 100% full. but unable to find exactly what directories or miunt point in / directories.

[@KR1ML0N]

Could you not just use ./ for current dir?

[@cleightthejw2202]

about the 'root drive'- if there are multiple drives is there only 1 that is root over all of them or is it ''root' from each drive? What would make it the 'root'? The fact that is it the initial and 'over all' controlling point that allows access to pretty much (if not) everything else? Also, what is a 'bootable' usb? Are al usb's bootable or no? If not, why not? What are instances of the differences- especially the bootable usb?? Maybe you have vids on these already. I'm not aware of them if they do exist (obviously).

[@bellatrix625]

There is always one root directory in a linux system. If you have multiple drives with Linux installed then you will have multiple root directories in corresponding drives. And if you want to use it in one linux system then you need to mount it there as normal directory/file and this directory acts as root for that mounted drive.

[@jasonthomas5647]

I installed 22.04 with standard “use entire disk” on my 170G SSD and df-H command says half of it is 100% full and I can’t acces the rest! I lonly have xfcedesktop and a few small programs running and it says it’s taking up 77G! No way! Now I can’t upgrade my system because it says there’s no more room. Something’s not right. How do I access the rest of the 80G and how do I clear out the bloat? I’m tempted to scrap the whole thing and start over!

[@rursus8354]

*Kernel panic!* (Perhaps once or twice a year)

[@TheFartfish]

Food for algorithm ;-)

[@cyberhifi2629]

I think I am the first viewer of this video🙂🙂

[@madebytl]

You are my g

[@khawarbaig2074]

i really like it from pakistan

[@BashirAhmed-uh9pp]

The good Device

[@BMcC78]

Jay, the boring linux guy... this is great to fall asleep to.

[@homelemon2579]

平衡

[@kennyroostam290]

why du -h - -max-depth 1 /home/jay shows more folders than sudo du -hsc /home/jay*?

[@simonsonjh]

The -x option isn't much use on ZFS systems showing filesystems such as "rpool/USERDATA/simonson_mn5ygm"

[@ManojKumarVishwas]

du -h -d1 /var/

[@predragnikolic1259]

Thanks!