I'm looking for a linux alternative to WinDirStat. I would like to know what is taking up space on my hard drives.
A program that works on console and doesn't require a UI is preferred .
14 Answers
If you want a command-line tool, I prefer ncdu, an ncurses version of du. It scans the disk (or a given folder) and then shows the top-level space usages; you can select a given directory to get the corresponding summary for that directory, and go back without needing to reanalyze:
If you're ok with a GUI program, Filelight is the closest thing to WinDirStat I've found; it shows a graphical view of space consumption:
Like ncdu, Filelight lets you select a given directory to get the breakdown for that directory
answered Nov 12, 2010 at 6:35
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2@JanusTroelsen, this was answered in 2010. 5 years before the initial commit of QDirStat github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat/commit/… Apr 14, 2022 at 12:57
Based on your issues in installing ncdu my recommendation would be to use du and sort on together.
For instance:
du /home | sort -rn(will search all files/directories under /home and sort them by largest to smallest.du -h /home | sort -rh(same but will show it in MB/KB/etc) - Note this requires coreutils 7.5 or newer (sort --versionto check)
You can replace /home with any directory of your choice.
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That's excellent, thanks for the help. My coreutils is 5.97 - is this why the sort order of du -h isn't right? Nov 12, 2010 at 11:26
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Yep, you'd have to settle for
du /home | sort -rnwith coreutils 5.97 or use some 'magic' with perl etc as demonstrated over on ServerFault (serverfault.com/q/62411/60012)– N JNov 12, 2010 at 11:27 -
2OTOH if there is a big sub-sub-directory its bloat will show multiple time (for that dir and each parent dir) at the top of the results, and IMHO that distracts from the true bloat. Using "ncdu" suggested below could help with that, I'm gonna try it. =)– lapoJan 13, 2011 at 21:39
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2I find the -size option to "find" useful as well, as it lets you find all files under a certain. At least for GNU find, you can do something like: "find . -size +100M" to find files larger than 100M below the current directory.– gabe.Feb 2, 2011 at 4:48
You should be aware that WinDirStat is actually a port of KDirStat, which is a Linux/KDE program. So, if you are looking for a Linux alternative to WinDirStat, you certainly should take a look at KDirStat. It is already packaged in most distros, just install it.
Another alternative is FileLight, already cited by Michael Mrozek, and the Konqueror plugin fsview (you can run it standalone from the command-line).
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24Wow, I never realized that (I guess "Win" in the name should've been a giveaway). A coworker once asked me if there was a Linux version of WinSCP; I died inside a little Nov 13, 2010 at 3:27
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3Note that it will be called K4DirStat for Ubuntu if installing via software center May 17, 2018 at 13:26
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Another GUI program is: baobab
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In deed, if I'm on Ubuntu I won't bother to look for any alternative.
baobapis just enough. Dec 27, 2010 at 4:09 -
It also shows number of files, which sometimes needs to be checked as well as disk space– golimarAug 13, 2018 at 10:26
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However, when I used it on an NTFS volume (a former Windows boot volume, specifically) of around 100 GB, it kept counting and reached nearly 500 GB in the total size and still kept going - I guess it doesn't have any smarts about counting hardlinks and symlinks.– Milind RAug 16 at 8:33
Use QDirStat (formerly KDirStat).
It includes a perl script that generates a cache file on the server/console without any need for an UI to be running/installed; transfer it to your desktop machine and view it in the gui client.
See https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/256516/186308 for details.
I prefer the following command line:
$ du -s -m -x * | sort -n
Breaking it down, du shows disk usage; -s says print the total for each argument (each item in the current directory), -m says show the size in Megabytes. This makes it easier for sort to work; sort doesn't really understand the -h output. The -x ignores other filesystems; this is useful when trying to find space hogs in /var, and /var/spool/foo is a different filesystem.
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Yes, but du /home on my systems returns tens of thousands of files; I rarely care what the (say) 100 largest of those files are; I typically want to know which subdirectories are taking up the most space.– P JoslinDec 3, 2014 at 20:43
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Instead of -s, I specified --max-depth=2, as I wanted to go one directory down from the root directory, but your answer pointed me in that direction. Thanks! Oct 13, 2016 at 14:06
There's also this cool python script from /www.vrplumber.com/programming/runsnakerun/
bzr branch lp:~mcfletch/squaremap/trunk squaremap
It's not the most feature rich, but it's run from a single python script so it's extremely portable.
If you looked at the about screen on windirstat it showed you that it's based on kdirstat.
You could also try GD Map, another GUI tool based on treemaps.
xdiskusage is very flexible, lightweight with very lean dependencies, easy to compile..
It shows a tree left-to-right that you can navigate with mouse or arrow keys, zoom in (click or enter), hide some parts for a better view, change sort order, number of colors etc with keys or context menu.
It's so lighweight that you can use it on a remote SSH link with good performance. In this case I recommend -q command line option to disable the progress bar that appears while files are walked.
You can also optionally run du yourself beforehand.
One situation is a remote filesystem which is full or near-full. On that system run du -ak | gzip >log_of_disk_usage.txt.gz, fetch the output and run gzip -dc log_of_disk_usage.txt.gz | xdiskusage -aq locally.
Or even ssh myremotesystem "cd /filesystem_near_full/ ; du -ak | gzip" > log_of_disk_usage.txt.gz to store the result locally without writing anything remotely.
xdiskusage does not offer to modify the filesystem (like move to trash, etc) but you can copy a path to clipboard and paste that into a file manager, terminal etc.
answered Jun 17, 2017 at 19:54
I have recently used command line tool (CLI, not TUI): http://zevv.nl/play/code/philesight/
It produces a PNG file which you can view somewhere else. It also has a CGI script.
Most likely you are not limited to text mode at your local workstation, so it should be appropriate.
Also to see the files in a specific directory sorted by size after you have found the directory using du use:
ls -lrSh
Duc (https://duc.zevv.nl/) will work from the command line.
It can be installed and used like this in Debian 9:
# apt install duc
# duc index /
# duc graph /
With this you'll get a file named duc.png in the current directory. Now, you can copy this file to another GUI capable computer and it will look like this:
NOTE: Duc is the replacement for the tool that @OCTAGRAM mentioned in his answer.
For btrfs filesystems, you may like my tool, btdu:
- Starts showing results instantly
- Shows snapshots / reflinks / cloned files correctly
- Shows real (compressed) usage of compressed files
answered Jun 7, 2021 at 9:47
ncduis my preferred answer, but I see the first answer says you're having problems with it that aren't in your question.