[SOLVED] Find largest files

Fixit7 · 12-28-2014, 10:48 PM

I am trying to find the top 20 largest files on my linux partition.

None of the examples I have seen work.

The ones that work list files from every partition.

Does someone have an example I can study ?

dijetlo · 12-28-2014, 11:29 PM

Hey Fixit,

It seems that part of the problem may be how are you identifying which partition is the linux partition?

du <insert path to partition> | sort -n -r | head -n 20

works fine if you know what the path to the partition you want to look at is.

as an example, on one instance, /usr/local/ is a separate partition (/dev/sda5) I could use

du /usr/local/ | sort -n -r | head -n 20

to get that information about the files in /usr/local

If your entire installation is on one particular partition and you want metrics on that partition, the simplest way to do that is...

du | sort -n -r | head -n 20
which will give you the largest 20 (minus any permission denied error messages)

Fixit7 · 12-29-2014, 09:07 AM

Thanks dijetlo.

It looks like it shows the 20 largest directories which is helpful in showing where the large files are.

What about showing the 20 largest files themselves ?

Quote:

# du | sort -n -r | head -n 20
752000 .
359712 ./.wine
358732 ./.wine/drive_c
259556 ./.wine/drive_c/windows
233912 ./.cache
167552 ./.cache/mozilla
131124 ./.wine/drive_c/windows/mono
131120 ./.wine/drive_c/windows/mono/mono-2.0
109416 ./.cache/mozilla/firefox
109412 ./.cache/mozilla/firefox/cavkygim.default
105056 ./.wine/drive_c/windows/mono/mono-2.0/lib
105052 ./.wine/drive_c/windows/mono/mono-2.0/lib/mono
104356 ./.cache/mozilla/firefox/cavkygim.default/Cache
74280 ./.wine/drive_c/users
74220 ./.wine/drive_c/users/root
70340 ./.wine/drive_c/users/root/Local Settings
70320 ./.wine/drive_c/users/root/Local Settings/Temporary Internet Files
70316 ./.wine/drive_c/users/root/Local Settings/Temporary Internet Files/Content.IE5
66332 ./.wine/drive_c/windows/Installer
66332 ./.cache/wine

veerain · 12-29-2014, 09:14 PM

Use the find command with -size option like:

Code:

find / -size +100M

And you have to adjust the size parameter until find the best one or after closing on approximately you use individual du command on them and sort with 'sort' command.

schneidz · 12-29-2014, 09:42 PM

Code:

[schneidz@hyper ~]$ cat bin/space.ksh
#!/bin/bash



sudo find / -type f -printf "%s \t\t%p\n" | sort -nr > ~/file-sizes.txt
sudo find / -type d -exec du -b -d 0 -S '{}' \; | sort -nr > ~/dir-sizes.txt

df -h

dijetlo · 12-29-2014, 10:11 PM

Quote:

find . -type f -exec ls -s {} \; | sort -n -r | head -20

Replace the '.' after find with the root of the file system you want searched.
Warning, depending on how many files this thing is going to process, it can take a while.

Fixit7 · 12-29-2014, 10:38 PM

Thanks for the help.

Would be nice to filter out those "ls: cannot access ./mnt/sdb1/TOSHIBA_SDB1: No such file or directory"
lines. :-)