Debian / Wrong free space / "du" and "ls" show different space use

brgsousa · 02-24-2010, 08:49 AM

Hi,
I can't find out why that are invisible files using /var/log space

Code:

# du -hs .
5,3G    .
# ls -lha | more
total 11M
...

I've already used reiserfsck and nothing changed.

regards

pixellany · 02-24-2010, 09:03 AM

On my system the two commands give the same result. Were you running the commands as root?

Note: /var/log does not typically contain hidden files. Your command (du -h .) means to run du -h on the current directory. Just running "du -h" does the same thing.

smoker · 02-24-2010, 09:15 AM

du is measuring space used in the current directory and subdirectories.

ls -lha is only looking in the current directory.

try

Code:

ls -R -lha | more

But it could take a while ...

You will have to add up each directorys total to get a final total.

Code:

du -hs .

run as a user from /home/user on my system gives 753G

Code:

du -hsS .

run as a user from /home/user on my system gives 52M

Code:

ls -lha | more

run as a user from /home/user gives 53M

man du

man ls

brgsousa · 02-25-2010, 11:55 AM

ops
my bad. you are correct. there is a directory "/var/log/apache2" that has 5.1GB . That's was the problem.
thanks!