Как найти файлы большого размера linux

asked Sep 20, 2012 at 23:15

Quote from this link-

If you want to find and print the top 10 largest files names (not
directories) in a particular directory and its sub directories

$ find . -type f -printf '%s %pn'|sort -nr|head

To restrict the search to the present directory use «-maxdepth 1» with
find.

$ find . -maxdepth 1 -printf '%s %pn'|sort -nr|head

And to print the top 10 largest «files and directories»:

$ du -a . | sort -nr | head

** Use «head -n X» instead of the only «head» above to print the top X largest files (in all the above examples)

To find the top 25 files in the current directory and its subdirectories:

find . -type f -exec ls -al {} ; | sort -nr -k5 | head -n 25

This will output the top 25 files by sorting based on the size of the files via the «sort -nr -k5» piped command.

Same but with human-readable file sizes:

find . -type f -exec ls -alh {} ; | sort -hr -k5 | head -n 25

find . -type f | xargs ls -lS | head -n 1

outputs

-rw-r--r--  1 nneonneo  staff  9274991 Apr 11 02:29 ./devel/misc/test.out

If you just want the filename:

find . -type f | xargs ls -1S | head -n 1

This avoids using awk and allows you to use whatever flags you want in ls.

Caveat. Because xargs tries to avoid building overlong command lines, this might fail if you run it on a directory with a lot of files because ls ends up executing more than once. It’s not an insurmountable problem (you can collect the head -n 1 output from each ls invocation, and run ls -S again, looping until you have a single file), but it does mar this approach somewhat.

answered Sep 21, 2012 at 3:45

There is no simple command available to find out the largest files/directories on a Linux/UNIX/BSD filesystem. However, combination of following three commands (using pipes) you can easily find out list of largest files:

# du -a /var | sort -n -r | head -n 10

If you want more human readable output try:

$ cd /path/to/some/var
$ du -hsx * | sort -rh | head -10

Where,

• Var is the directory you wan to search
• du command -h option : display sizes in human readable format (e.g.,
  1K, 234M, 2G).
• du command -s option : show only a total for each
  argument (summary).
• du command -x option : skip directories on
  different file systems.
• sort command -r option : reverse the result
  of comparisons.
• sort command -h option : compare human readable
  numbers. This is GNU sort specific option only.
• head command -10 OR -n 10 option : show the first 10 lines.

answered May 26, 2014 at 9:34

This lists files recursively if they’re normal files, sorts by the 7th field (which is size in my find output; check yours), and shows just the first file.

find . -type f -ls | sort +7 | head -1

The first option to find is the start path for the recursive search. A -type of f searches for normal files. Note that if you try to parse this as a filename, you may fail if the filename contains spaces, newlines or other special characters. The options to sort also vary by operating system. I’m using FreeBSD.

A «better» but more complex and heavier solution would be to have find traverse the directories, but perhaps use stat to get the details about the file, then perhaps use awk to find the largest size. Note that the output of stat also depends on your operating system.

answered Sep 20, 2012 at 23:20

This will find the largest file or folder in your present working directory:

ls -S /path/to/folder | head -1

To find the largest file in all sub-directories:

find /path/to/folder -type f -exec ls -s {} ; | sort -nr | awk 'NR==1 { $1=""; sub(/^ /, ""); print }'

answered Sep 20, 2012 at 23:21

On Solaris I use:

find . -type f -ls|sort -nr -k7|awk 'NR==1{print $7,$11}' #formatted

or

find . -type f -ls | sort -nrk7 | head -1 #unformatted

because anything else posted here didn’t work.
This will find the largest file in $PWD and subdirectories.

answered Oct 13, 2013 at 22:33

Try the following one-liner (display top-20 biggest files):

ls -1Rs | sed -e "s/^ *//" | grep "^[0-9]" | sort -nr | head -n20

or (human readable sizes):

ls -1Rhs | sed -e "s/^ *//" | grep "^[0-9]" | sort -hr | head -n20

Works fine under Linux/BSD/OSX in comparison to other answers, as find’s -printf option doesn’t exist on OSX/BSD and stat has different parameters depending on OS. However the second command to work on OSX/BSD properly (as sort doesn’t have -h), install sort from coreutils or remove -h from ls and use sort -nr instead.

So these aliases are useful to have in your rc files:

alias big='du -ah . | sort -rh | head -20'
alias big-files='ls -1Rhs | sed -e "s/^ *//" | grep "^[0-9]" | sort -hr | head -n20'

answered Mar 5, 2015 at 12:34

answered Sep 21, 2012 at 3:23

Ansgar WiechersAnsgar Wiechers

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jlettvinjlettvin

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That is quite simpler way to do it:

ls -l | tr -s " " " " | cut -d " " -f 5,9 | sort -n -r | head -n 1***

And you’ll get this: 8445 examples.desktop

MonirMonir

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linux.cnflinux.cnf

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asked Apr 20, 2011 at 14:01

If you just need to find large files, you can use find with the -size option. The next command will list all files larger than 10MiB (not to be confused with 10MB):

find / -size +10M -ls

If you want to find files between a certain size, you can combine it with a «size lower than» search. The next command find files between 10MiB and 12MiB:

find / -size +10M -size -12M -ls

apt-cache search 'disk usage' lists some programs available for disk usage analysis. One application that looks very promising is gt5.

From the package description:

Years have passed and disks have become larger and larger, but even on this incredibly huge harddisk era, the space seems to disappear over time. This small and effective programs provides more convenient listing than the default du(1). It displays what has happened since last run and displays dir size and the total percentage. It is possible to navigate and ascend to directories by using cursor-keys with text based browser (links, elinks, lynx etc.)

On the «related packages» section of gt5, I found ncdu. From its package description:

Ncdu is a ncurses-based du viewer. It provides a fast and easy-to-use interface through famous du utility. It allows to browse through the directories and show percentages of disk usage with ncurses library.

My favorite solution uses a mix from several of these good answers.

du -aBM 2>/dev/null | sort -nr | head -n 50 | more

du arguments:

• -a for «all» files and directories. Leave it off for just directories
• -BM to output the sizes in megabyte (M) block sizes (B)
• 2>/dev/null — exclude «permission denied» error messages (thanks @Oli)

sort arguments:

• -n for «numeric»
• -r for «reverse» (biggest to smallest)

head arguments:

• -n 50 for the just top 50 results.
• Leave off more if using a smaller number

Note: Prefix with sudo to include directories that your account does not have permission to access.

Example showing top 10 biggest files and directories in /var (including grand total).

cd /var
sudo du -aBM 2>/dev/null | sort -nr | head -n 10
7555M   .
6794M   ./lib
5902M   ./lib/mysql
3987M   ./lib/mysql/my_database_dir
1825M   ./lib/mysql/my_database_dir/a_big_table.ibd
997M    ./lib/mysql/my_database_dir/another_big_table.ibd
657M    ./log
629M    ./log/apache2
587M    ./log/apache2/ssl_access.log
273M    ./cache

answered Jul 3, 2015 at 23:24

I just use a combination of du and sort.

sudo du -sx /* 2>/dev/null | sort -n

0   /cdrom
0   /initrd.img
0   /lib64
0   /proc
0   /sys
0   /vmlinuz
4   /lost+found
4   /mnt
4   /nonexistent
4   /selinux
8   /export
36  /media
56  /scratchbox
200 /srv
804 /dev
4884    /root
8052    /bin
8600    /tmp
9136    /sbin
11888   /lib32
23100   /etc
66480   /boot
501072  /web
514516  /lib
984492  /opt
3503984 /var
7956192 /usr
74235656    /home

Then it’s a case of rinse and repeat. Target the subdirectories you think are too big, run the command for them and you find out what’s causing the problem.

Note: I use du‘s -x flag to keep things limited to one filesystem (I have quite a complicated arrangement of cross-mounted things between SSD and RAID5).

Note 2: 2>/dev/null redirects any error messages into oblivion. If they don’t bother you, it’s not obligatory.

answered Apr 20, 2011 at 14:30

kenorbkenorb

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qbi’s answer is correct but it will be very slow when there are a lot of files since it will start a new ls process for each item.

a much faster version using find without spawning child processes would be to use printf to print the size in bytes (%s) and the path (%p)

find "$directory" -type f -printf "%s - %pn" | sort -n | tail -n $num_entries

answered Nov 16, 2011 at 12:55

qbiqbi

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A great, user-friendly tool referenced in the answer to a similar question is NCurses Disk Usage tool:

sudo ncdu /

answered Sep 9, 2019 at 23:26

zorbon.czzorbon.cz

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answered Jan 29, 2013 at 11:47

answered Jun 11, 2013 at 19:04

ABuABu

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answered Aug 27, 2019 at 16:32