I wrote a program in C# for winndows that is backing up my windows server to a remote linux box over the internet. So I am trying to find the most efficient way to get the total bytes of all files in a directory (NOT INCLUDING ANYTHING IN SUB DIRECTORIES). There are lots of options using the "du" command but I cannot find any option that does not interrogate sub directories, reason is my main folder that I am wanting to get just the files has over 80,000 sub directories and 2.8 million files inside of the those sub directories. So all du commands even using the --max-depth end up taking hours to return an answer. I am currently using du and adding all the files from each folder to the command, which creates a lot of traffic in and out (the linux box is at a remote location). So hopefully someone has a good solution using du or maybe even ls. Just remember I am trying to keep network traffic small and tight for speed.

Hi ktoonsez,

Welcome!

You can try rsync --dry-run, which will output the total size of everything it would have transferred. To save bandwidth you can use rsync -c, to compress everything before transferring it. There's many tricks using rsync. Debian has the ftpsync scripts that are used to mirror the debian archive. I mirror the i386 and amd64 architectures, which together are about 500,000 objects, and the machine doesn't even break a sweat.

You can just take the ftpsync package and customize it to your needs.

Shoot, I should have mentioned that the data I am backing up is from a windows machine with a .NET program I wrote that is is executing SSH command from a dll so rsync isn't going to work. Thanks

You could use "find" with maxdepth and print the size and simply sum it yourself, but simpler to just use "ls -l" and then sum it ignoring the dir entries. Trivial awk one-liner will do it.

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i see this du option:
Source: https://linux.die.net/man/1/du

strace confirms what the OP reported; "du -S" descends into subdirs and stats every file. "ls -l" doesn't.

Ya, you would think that works but it does not, it still dives into the sub directories

Actually this might work pretty good. Using the command below that will give me only the sizes which I think will work great and keep the data down to a minimum:

ls -1pea | grep -v / | awk '{ print $3 }'


Thanks :-)

You can use rsync on windows: http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp

i am runing ubuntu for the first time. its my first time installing lenux ever. how do i install sound drivers for gigabyte ax370 gaming 5. this is all new to me so i dont know any code. can anybody help a beginer-

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