CLOSED: [2014-03-25 Tue 20:49] SCHEDULED: <2014-03-25 Di> :PROPERTIES: :CREATED: [2014-03-25 Di 09:33] :ID: 2014-03-25-xdu :END: :LOGBOOK: - State "DONE" from "DONE" [2017-07-23 Sun 10:18] - State "DONE" from "STARTED" [2014-03-25 Tue 20:49] :END: Update 2017-07-23: Screenshot and block-size Now and then, everybody has to look out for folders on the hard drive which do consume unusual amount of space for a variety of reasons. A very handy tool I am using on GNU/Linux since many years is [[http://sd.wareonearth.com/~phil/xdu/][xdu]]. The tool is using the visualization technique called [[http://courses.iicm.tugraz.at/ivis/ivis.pdf][layered space-filling tree browser]] to quickly give you an overview of what (sub-) directories occupy what amount of disk space. -------- #+CAPTION: xdu output window of this blog #+ATTR_HTML: :alt Window showing the xdu output of this blog #+ATTR_HTML: :align center :width 400 [[tsfile:2017-07-23 xdu of publicvoit -- screenshots publicvoit.png][2017-07-23 xdu of publicvoit -- screenshots publicvoit.png]] The usage in the command line is pretty easy: #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE du | xdu #+END_EXAMPLE If you want to get insight on the usage on a remote host, you can also use a temporary file: #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE du > 2014-03-25-hostname.du.log #+END_EXAMPLE On localhost, you can do the analysis with: #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE scp remoteuser@remotehost:2014-03-25-hostname.du.log . xdu < 2014-03-25-hostname.du.log #+END_EXAMPLE The interface looks pretty simple and it is actually simple. It gets the job done. You can navigate through sub-trees by using your mouse and clicking on any directory. If you've got a fairly large hard disk with lots of data, you might run into an [[https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=868896][issue where xdu gets an overflow]]. You can use a different unit such as Gigabytes with: #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE du --block-size=1G | xdu #+END_EXAMPLE Have fun. By the way, on OS X I am using [[http://www.derlien.com/][Disk Inventory X]] for the same reason. It's not that fast but more fancy than xdu. However, I seldom use any of those additional features.