How can I see from the CLI how much space a file occupies? how can I see how much a directory occupies ?What is an inode ? When I installed my linux I had to choose between three types of inodes 1024 2048 and 4096 ? what does this mean ?

du filename
du directoryname or du inside directory the directory in question
du -s to hide subdirectory output

Hi,
Welcome to Linux!!

1. ll <filename> or ls -l <filename>
if you don't give <filename> they will list all files in the directory

2. type "man du"
du will show you file and directory sizes

3. inodes are like clusters in DOS. They are the smallest area that Linux can write a file to.
If you make the small "1024" small files will use less disk space. If you make them bigger
"4096" they will use more disk space. The advantage to larger inode sizes is that they
take less time to find and will slightly improve disk proformance.

hope this helps

Michael

thank you all for the answers, they've been a real help for me