how to assess occupied space

how to assess occupied space

[Revobild / Heimo Claasen]

Is there a practical way to get a sum-up of HD space occupied by one
dir (including subdirs) and then, especially of a package ?

I'd like to weed out never used stuff and recover scarce disk place.
Is there a good, or any, "strategy" for this ?

// Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2002-09-14

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Re: how to assess occupied space

[Heimo Claasen]

Thanks for the hints; I didn't know some of the 'du' subtelties.
(BTW, is 'du' for _disk_ or for _directory_ use ?)

The question for "space occupied" is particularl important with the
Zip-disks, and sometimes 'du' or 'df' didn't seem to give reliable
answers.
(And in any case to know how much space is left demands some mental gym.)

The "weeding out" of needless stuff is linked to this - I'd like to
know which are the most (unused, space) wasters.
"Package", incidentally, was meant precisely as that:

> But since a package typically installs stuff in several separate places
> ... there is no good way, at
> least not that I know of, to figure out how much space a package takes up
> by examining directories in the filesystem.

The various package managers give some help, but it's not very
transparent. After I spent full days on de-installing not needed
packages (and some notes kept would indicate a considerable volume),
the final result was only a small diminuation of occupied disk space,
according to those 'du'/'df's.
Hmm.

// Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2002-09-15
The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read  ==>  http://www.revobild.net

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Re: how to assess occupied space

[Mike Dresser]

On 15 Sep 2002, Revobild / Heimo Claasen wrote:

> Is there a practical way to get a sum-up of HD space occupied by one
> dir (including subdirs) and then, especially of a package ?
>
> I'd like to weed out never used stuff and recover scarce disk place.
> Is there a good, or any, "strategy" for this ?
>
> // Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2002-09-14

du directoryname

last line there should be the total size in kilobytes

if that's too large of output, du --max-depth=0

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Re: how to assess occupied space

[Ray Olszewski]

The command you want for checking directory sizes is "du". Its man page 
will teach you the details, but as a simple example, the command

         du -sh /home/*

will give you the amount of space being used by each home directory on the 
system.

In this context, your use of "package" is unclear.  A package is usually a 
portmanteau file that contains a set of related files, most often (putting 
aside source packages for the moment) an executable and associated stuff -- 
that is, a package is an .rpm, or .deb, or .tgz file. If that is what you 
mean, the more developed packaging systems have commands that tell you a 
lot about the package, including how much space it takes up when installed. 
For help with that, ask about whichever packaging system you use (or 
consult ithe man page for the package manager, if it has one).

But since a package typically installs stuff in several separate places 
(for example, an executable in /usr/bin, a man page somewhere else, 
possibly other documentation in /usr/share/doc, configuration stuff in 
/etc, and maybe boot/init stuff in /etc/init.d), there is no good way, at 
least not that I know of, to figure out how much space a package takes up 
by examining directories in the filesystem.

At , Revobild / Heimo Claasen wrote:
>Is there a practical way to get a sum-up of HD space occupied by one
>dir (including subdirs) and then, especially of a package ?
>
>I'd like to weed out never used stuff and recover scarce disk place.
>Is there a good, or any, "strategy" for this ?


--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: how to assess occupied space

[Haines Brown]

Mike,

While du will provide that, you might want to control its output. I
put together a little command to pin down an enormous file, the name
and location of which I did not know. I've not used it enough to know
how reliable it is:

du -a <path and target directory> | sort -nr | head

This includes directories to help me locate the bloated file. The
output is sorted by size in reverse order, and that output is limited
to the ten biggest files. 

Haines Brown  
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Re: how to assess occupied space

[Mike Dresser]

On 15 Sep 2002, Heimo Claasen wrote:

> Thanks for the hints; I didn't know some of the 'du' subtelties.
> (BTW, is 'du' for _disk_ or for _directory_ use ?)
>

Disk usage, according to the man pages.  But in a way, directory use is
accurate too.

> The question for "space occupied" is particularl important with the
> Zip-disks, and sometimes 'du' or 'df' didn't seem to give reliable
> answers.
> (And in any case to know how much space is left demands some mental gym.)

if it's ext2 format(default), there's typically 5% reserved to the
superuser.

So your disk space, minus your disk used, will be less than the available
space.

Mike

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Re: how to assess occupied space

[Ray Olszewski]

At , Heimo Claasen wrote:
>Thanks for the hints; I didn't know some of the 'du' subtelties.
>(BTW, is 'du' for _disk_ or for _directory_ use ?)

du is a very old Unix command (almost all the 2-character ones are ... they 
date back to 300-baud days, if not to 110). I doubt anyone today knows for 
sure what du originally was intended as a mnemonic for. I'd *guess* "disk 
utilization", but I don't really know either.

[...]
>The question for "space occupied" is particularl important with the
>Zip-disks, and sometimes 'du' or 'df' didn't seem to give reliable
>answers.
>(And in any case to know how much space is left demands some mental gym.)

This description is too vague to troubleshoot, probably even for people who 
have Zip drives. I'm not even sure what you mean by "reliable" -- in my 
professional world, a "reliable" measure is one that is repeatable, but not 
necessarily accurate. By that standard, I'd be astounded if du and df were 
not reliable. (Such a measure is far from useless. If you knew, for 
example, that "df" always underestimated free space by 10%, you could 
easily make use of it ... but that might be the "mental gym" you are 
referring to, I suppose.)

I expect you mean accurate, though ... so I wonder if, for example, you are 
allowing for the reserved-for-root exclusion that df makes. Or even the 
effect of the fact that 1K=1024 (usually), not 1000. These are only 
examples of two possible sources of discrepancies between what you get and 
what you expect, included here to try to make concrete why we need the 
details of a complaint, not just a general lament, if we are to give you 
decent advice.

[...]
>The various package managers give some help, but it's not very
>transparent. After I spent full days on de-installing not needed
>packages (and some notes kept would indicate a considerable volume),
>the final result was only a small diminuation of occupied disk space,
>according to those 'du'/'df's.
>Hmm.

Again, you need to be specific here. My own experience is with the Debian 
package manager, and I find it (I mean apt, not dpkg) is very helpful with 
respect to space utilization issues ... not perfect, but still very good. 
Which distro and "various package managers" are you actually using, and 
what are a couple of examples of inconsistencies between the sizes 
the  package manager reports and the added space de-installing actually 
delivers?


--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: how to assess occupied space

[Ray Olszewski]

At 02:51 PM 9/15/02 -0400, Mike Dresser wrote:
>On 15 Sep 2002, Heimo Claasen wrote:
>
> > Thanks for the hints; I didn't know some of the 'du' subtelties.
> > (BTW, is 'du' for _disk_ or for _directory_ use ?)
> >
>
>Disk usage, according to the man pages.  But in a way, directory use is
>accurate too.

Where did you find this? It's not in my man page for du. (Just curious.)


--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: how to assess occupied space

[Mike Dresser]

On Sun, 15 Sep 2002, Ray Olszewski wrote:

> >Disk usage, according to the man pages.  But in a way, directory use is
> >accurate too.
>
> Where did you find this? It's not in my man page for du. (Just curious.)

DESCRIPTION
       Summarize  disk usage of each FILE, recursively for direc
       tories.

(debian potato machien)

Hmm.  I'm leaning towards directory usage now :D

Although, you can also du filename, and it will give you the size of a
file as well.

Mike

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Re: how to assess occupied space

[Ray Olszewski]

At 03:16 PM 9/15/02 -0400, Mike Dresser wrote:
>On Sun, 15 Sep 2002, Ray Olszewski wrote:
>
> > >Disk usage, according to the man pages.  But in a way, directory use is
> > >accurate too.
> >
> > Where did you find this? It's not in my man page for du. (Just curious.)
>
>DESCRIPTION
>        Summarize  disk usage of each FILE, recursively for direc
>        tories.

Oh yes, that's in my man page too. I just don't read it as defining what 
the abbreviation means ... merely as describing what the command does. 
Thanks for the clarification.


--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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