[HN Gopher] Ncdu - NCurses Disk Usage
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Ncdu - NCurses Disk Usage
        
       Author : thecosmicfrog
       Score  : 358 points
       Date   : 2022-12-07 12:57 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (dev.yorhel.nl)
 (TXT) w3m dump (dev.yorhel.nl)
        
       | user3939382 wrote:
       | If someone could make a CLI DaisyDisk that would be amazing. If
       | anyone's aware of it let me know please!
        
       | fomine3 wrote:
       | `rclone ncdu` is also a jewel
        
         | ghewgill wrote:
         | Yes, this. I actually discovered ncdu through first seeing it
         | in rclone. I thought "that is awesome, why isn't this tool a
         | thing?" And it was.
         | 
         | I type `du -sk *|sort -n` a lot less frequently now.
        
       | tjoff wrote:
       | Really nice tool, didn't know of the rewrite in Zig, the linked
       | blog post discussing the rewrite it was good:
       | https://dev.yorhel.nl/doc/ncdu2
        
       | esaym wrote:
       | I don't really see the point of a gfx ui for this. I just live on
       | the edge:                 find / -type f -mtime +200 -exec rm -f
       | {} \;
        
         | jstimpfle wrote:
         | du -hs * | sort -h
        
       | unixhero wrote:
       | I use this system all the time!
       | 
       | ncdu -x to instruct it not to traverse foreign filesystems
        
       | TruthWillHurt wrote:
       | The page mentions FSV - a 3d fs viewer. Classic!
       | 
       | https://fsv.sourceforge.net/
        
       | alt227 wrote:
       | The trick with ncdu is to install it BEFORE your disk gets full
       | from some random error log going haywire.
        
         | banana_giraffe wrote:
         | I've saved the day once or twice by having a built of ncdu that
         | I can just copy to /dev/shm to figure out what went haywire.
        
         | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
         | Or a "journalctl --vacuum-time=1d" will usually clear a lot of
         | space
        
         | sdflhasjd wrote:
         | $ sudo apt install ncdu         > Not enough free space
         | 
         | Fuck!
         | 
         | Actually, one trick I learned was to create a dummy file full
         | of zeroes or rand, maybe 200MB or so, and place it in an
         | obvious location (e.g /) for easy deleting in such a crisis.
        
           | herpderperator wrote:
           | Ext3/ext4 systems do this by default and reserve 5% of space
           | for root.[0]
           | 
           | [0] https://docs.cloudera.com/cloudera-
           | manager/7.4.2/managing-cl...
        
         | cmg wrote:
         | One of the first things I did in my new position was to add
         | ncdu (and mysqltuner) to our Ansible playbooks. It's that
         | useful for me - I probably use it every other day at least.
        
         | ranting-moth wrote:
         | Another trick is to have a 1GB file called
         | DeleteMeWhenDiskIsFull.
         | 
         | Then you can delete that file and ponder your life choices that
         | led to that situation.
         | 
         | Just remember to create it again :)
        
           | doubled112 wrote:
           | > ponder your life choices that led to that situation.
           | 
           | I always remember that VMware vCenter appliance didn't come
           | with a working logrotate config for years and feel better.
        
         | dottedmag wrote:
         | That's the reason why typical Linux (or Unix) filesystem comes
         | with a setting to set reserve some space for root account.
         | 
         | Doesn't help if the disk is filled by processes running as
         | root, of course.
        
       | wjdp wrote:
       | While ncdu does the job I've found gdu (similar tool written in
       | Go) significantly faster for larger directories.
       | 
       | https://github.com/dundee/gdu
        
         | thatwasunusual wrote:
         | Still only pretty fast, though.
        
         | the_gipsy wrote:
         | Someone's gotta write rdu.
        
           | arnarbi wrote:
           | OP's link has a list at the bottom with alternatives (that in
           | itself is very cool). It lists both gdu and a Rust
           | alternative called dua.
        
             | aesh2Xa1 wrote:
             | See also broot, dust, and pdu for Rust alternatives.
        
               | unixhero wrote:
               | The realest reply
        
           | agleason wrote:
           | you're probably more likely to see jsdu first and then I'll
           | have my buddy explaining to me why it's actually faster
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | rwky wrote:
       | Love ncdu. I probably use it at least once a week somewhere
       | debugging a disk that's getting full.
        
       | mritzmann wrote:
       | If you use a Btrfs filesystem with snapshots, I can recommend
       | Btdu as an alternative. Advantage: Can handle duplicate files
       | (snapshots), which however only occupy 1x disk space.
       | 
       | https://github.com/CyberShadow/btdu
        
         | aendruk wrote:
         | More interesting than its support of Btrfs features is its
         | unusual statistical approach:
         | 
         | > btdu is a _sampling_ disk usage profiler [...] Pick a random
         | point on the disk then find what is located at that point [...]
         | btdu starts showing results instantly. Though wildly inaccurate
         | at first, they become progressively more accurate the longer
         | btdu is allowed to run.
        
         | thecosmicfrog wrote:
         | Have used btdu - very useful on Btrfs systems with lots of
         | snapshots.
        
         | aw1cks wrote:
         | This looks very useful! I wish there were something similar for
         | ZFS.
        
         | belthesar wrote:
         | At first blush, this beats the tar out of using other
         | deduplicator strategies on btrfs. I'm looking forward to
         | checking this out more thoroughly.
        
       | salmo wrote:
       | Interesting. I've just used df-m | sort -n and walked the tree
       | from the CLI for so long.
       | 
       | I've also used windirstat (I think that's what it was called)
       | years ago on Windows and Disk Inventory X on MacOS graphically.
       | 
       | This seems like a nice in between that could replace both methods
       | for me. I'll have to try.
       | 
       | The GUI bunch of squares is really only useful when you can hover
       | with a mouse and would be clunky in a TUI even if you could
       | render it. And the FS structure isn't immediately obvious, so I
       | find myself wasting time wandering hovering over big files and
       | globs of little ones.
       | 
       | I really like to avoid a mouse when I can unless it's really
       | useful.
        
         | mandarax8 wrote:
         | You mean `du` right?
        
           | salmo wrote:
           | Yes, just dumb fingers typing the comment. :(
        
           | smcameron wrote:
           | I always used "du -S | sort -n" ... I think... it's been a
           | long time since I've needed to worry about disk space.
        
         | lathiat wrote:
         | FYI I recently discovered sort ---human is a thing so you can
         | keep the K/M/G units if you want to.
         | 
         | However I use ncdu all the time.
        
           | salmo wrote:
           | Yeah, my habits come from using GNU, BSD, SysV and having to
           | use the lowest common denominator.
        
         | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
         | > I've also used windirstat (I think that's what it was called)
         | years ago on Windows and Disk Inventory X on MacOS graphically.
         | 
         | On Windows, the new hotness is WizTree, which rather than
         | recursively calling directory listing functions, it directly
         | reads and parses the file tables itself. This makes it orders
         | of magnitude faster. I have a 2 TB hard drive full of a million
         | files, and WizTree reads and parses it all in under a minute,
         | whereas I can expect WinDirStat to take half an hour.
        
           | salmo wrote:
           | That's pretty brilliant.
           | 
           | My windows experience is really out of date. I knew NT4 and
           | 2000 the best. Then I picked up 2008 for a while supporting
           | small businesses. I don't hate it or anything, but am
           | definitely deeper on Unixes and about equal on VMS that I
           | supported as my NT4/2000 time. I'll work on whatever pays :).
        
       | michaelsbradley wrote:
       | growlight may be of interest as well:
       | 
       | https://github.com/dankamongmen/growlight#readme
        
       | Cieplak wrote:
       | Have been using ncdu for more than a decade, and recently started
       | using diskonaut for similar purposes. Was looking for a terminal-
       | based treemap visualization for analyzing disk usage and stumbled
       | upon diskonaut, which is exactly that.
       | 
       | https://github.com/imsnif/diskonaut
        
       | valdect wrote:
       | i replaced gnome Baobab with ncdu for a while. it's significantly
       | faster
        
       | lasermike026 wrote:
       | Oldie but a goodie.
        
       | ktzar wrote:
       | ncdu is one of the most useful tools I've come across to quickly
       | get rid of unneeded files in remote servers. Top program.
        
       | jrm4 wrote:
       | Broadly, is anyone aware of a generalized list of "new versions
       | of classic tools?"
       | 
       | There are so many now that are better than the old stuff; I
       | almost feel like a unified round up of these, maybe even in a
       | _distro_ form, might be good for linux enthusiasts, newcomers,
       | old-timers, etc.
        
         | seedie wrote:
         | What came to my mind is a blog post[0] by Julia Evans
         | 
         | Not exactly what you had in mind but might still be
         | interesting.
         | 
         | [0] https://jvns.ca/blog/2022/04/12/a-list-of-new-ish--
         | command-l...
        
         | charlie0 wrote:
         | One thing that comes to mind as someone who is not in the know
         | of these new tools would be, are they safe?
         | 
         | The old tools have been there forever and used everywhere. My
         | assumption would be these are safe and don't change often. For
         | better or for worse, I would be concerned about using the newer
         | tools unless they are backed and/or approved by a large open
         | source org.
        
           | t-3 wrote:
           | If the tool is "$x, but with pretty colors", there's a good
           | chance they are not safe to use in pipelines. It's
           | distressingly common for colored output to be sent even when
           | piped.
        
           | jrm4 wrote:
           | I really respect this take -- and also kind of don't like it
           | at the same time?
           | 
           | Basically, I don't do "mission critical" Linux things. I
           | teach IT and I hack around on my own boxes with scripts and
           | stuff because it's fun and useful to me. I'm always on the
           | lookout for the hooks and such that can get more and
           | different people into Linux.
        
             | charlie0 wrote:
             | I understand. The truth can be bitter. My first instinct is
             | to install most of these tools. Then I remember all the
             | recent supply chain attacks and malicious packages that
             | have been snuck into software.
             | 
             | I use 1 daily driver for everything, including my finances
             | and crypto. So trust me, I'm bummed out about this. I'll
             | still check some of these out. As long as they seem safe, I
             | will install a few.
        
         | capableweb wrote:
         | https://github.com/ibraheemdev/modern-unix
         | 
         | > A collection of modern/faster/saner alternatives to common
         | unix commands.
        
         | carlhjerpe wrote:
         | Zellij instead of tmux (not necessarily better, but it's easier
         | to use)
         | 
         | Xonsh instead of bash (because you already know Python, why
         | learn a new horrible language?)
         | 
         | bat instead of cat (syntax highlights and other nice things)
         | 
         | exa instead of ls (just nicer)
         | 
         | neovim instead of vim (just better)
         | 
         | helix instead of neovim (just tested it, seems promising
         | though)
         | 
         | nix instead of your normal package manager (it works on Mac,
         | and essentially every Linux dist. And it's got superpowers with
         | devshells and home-manager to bring your configuration with you
         | everywhere)
         | 
         | rmtrash instead of rm (because you haven't configured btrfs
         | snapshots yet)
         | 
         | starship instead of your current prompt (is fast and displays a
         | lot of useful information in a compact way, very customizable)
         | 
         | mcfly instead of your current ctrl+r (search history in a nice
         | ncurses tui)
         | 
         | dogdns instead of dig (nicer colors, doesn't display useless
         | information)
         | 
         | amp, kakoune (more alternative text editors)
         | 
         | ripgrep instead of grep (it's just better yo)
         | 
         | htop instead of top (displays stuff nicer)
         | 
         | gitui/lazygit instead of git cli (at least for staging, nice
         | with file, hunk and line staging when you have ADHD)
         | 
         | gron + ripgrep instead of jq when searching through JSON in the
         | shell (so much easier)
         | 
         | keychain instead of ssh-agent (better cli imo)
         | 
         | Wrote this on the train with my phone by checking
         | https://github.com/Lillecarl/nixos/blob/master/common/defaul...
         | for which packages I have installed myself :)
        
           | kwhitefoot wrote:
           | > Xonsh instead of bash (because you already know Python, why
           | learn a new horrible language?)
           | 
           | Exactly, one horrible language is enough!
        
           | colordrops wrote:
           | ranger and vifm instead of midnight commander (vim key
           | bindings)
           | 
           | lsd instead of exa (better formatting, icons)
           | 
           | mosh instead of ssh for interactive sessions (maintains
           | session even with bad connectivity)
           | 
           | hyprland instead of sway instead of i3 instead of XMonad
        
           | dbdoskey wrote:
           | nushell instead of Xonsh/bash/fish. A bit of a learning curve
           | but worth it Also tig as a git ui
        
           | zorr wrote:
           | Tig also belongs in this list. An ncurses git repository
           | browser that I use all the time.
        
           | riquito wrote:
           | tuc instead of cut (cut text better than `cut`, or lines like
           | head/tails - eg cut first and last line at once) (but I'm
           | biased, I'm the author)
           | 
           | https://github.com/riquito/tuc/
        
           | beanaroo wrote:
           | btop instead of htop instead of top
        
             | mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
             | htop has much better support for more obscure unices, fwiw.
             | Supports every BSD, whatever Solaris is called these days.
             | 
             | Btop seems to only support Macos, Linux and FreeBSD.
        
             | daemoens wrote:
             | An annoying thing about btop is that it only uses the snap
             | package manager and nothing else. You can still install it
             | yourself easily but I don't understand why they'd stick
             | stick with snap alone.
        
         | pluc wrote:
         | bpytop, ncmpcpp
        
         | thecosmicfrog wrote:
         | I like iotop. Pretty much exactly what it sounds like - a top-
         | like program for I/O operations. It's also just an apt/yum/dnf
         | install away on most distros.
        
           | xorcist wrote:
           | htop also includes columns for read/write.
           | 
           | There's also more detailed CPU usage you can turn on,
           | including I/O wait.
           | 
           | Use it, it's great.
        
         | chasil wrote:
         | If you are just looking for the largest files in a directory
         | hierarchy, try this:                 find . -type f -print0 |
         | xargs -0 ls -s | sort -n
         | 
         | If your find/xargs don't support null delimiters, then the guy
         | who wrote musl has some tricks:
         | 
         | http://www.etalabs.net/sh_tricks.html
        
       | kqr wrote:
       | One thing ncdu does _not_ improve on over du | sort is that it
       | still needs to scan the full directory structure before even
       | displaying any result.
       | 
       | I would like something that starts estimating sizes immediately,
       | and then refines those estimations as it is able to spend more
       | time. I tried writing it myself, but I ended up not quite knowing
       | how to go about it, because just getting the count of files in a
       | directory takes about as long as getting the total size of said
       | files...
       | 
       | (Another problem is that file sizes are notoriously fat tailed,
       | so any estimation based on a subset of files is likely to
       | underestimate the true size. Maybe by looking at how the
       | estimation grows with more data one can infer something about the
       | tail exponent and use that to de-bias the estimation?)
        
       | uzername wrote:
       | I recently discovered ncdu while troubleshooting a logging issue
       | in one of servers. Something broke and syslog began to inflate
       | unchecked and consumed the entire disk's worth of space. ncdu
       | helped explore the system and find out where the file was. Great
       | tool.
        
       | progman32 wrote:
       | I use this tool all the time! On my Windows boxes, I use an old
       | tool called "Scanner" that presents the results in an interactive
       | pie chart: http://steffengerlach.de/freeware/
       | 
       | I've used it on everything from Windows 10 to my Win98SE
       | oldschool gaming box.
        
       | WorldPeas wrote:
       | NCDU is one of the first things I install on any system. Glad
       | it's finally getting some recognition
        
       | emmelaich wrote:
       | Fantastic tool. One improvement I'd like to see is support for
       | .Trash instead of straight out deletion.
       | 
       | I had to delete a lot of stuff so I turned off the 'Are you
       | sure?' prompt.
       | 
       | Sure enough, 4 minutes later I fat fingered some wanted files
       | into oblivion.
        
       | topspin wrote:
       | Used the zig static build in offline mode yesterday to hunt down
       | a excessive storage consumer. Highly effective.
       | 
       | Another tool I've used is jdiskreport[1]. It's a java app with a
       | straightforward GUI. File system scanning is multi-threaded and
       | quite efficient.
       | 
       | 1. http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/
        
       | vlowrian wrote:
       | Wow! Someone really outdid himself on todays (7th) advent of code
       | challenge! ;)
        
       | desro wrote:
       | I use ncdu almost daily across many different systems. Especially
       | handy when running macOS on a <512GB volume and you need to keep
       | an eye on ballooning caches and other "helpful" cruft.
       | 
       | `rmlint` and `jdupes` are also seeing a lot of use here lately,
       | reclaiming terabytes of space from years of sloppy media
       | organization (or the lack thereof!)
        
         | lanstin wrote:
         | Yeah I prune stuff with ncdu weekly on my work 0.5T machine.
         | Oddly I don't have to use it so much on my 2T personal machine.
        
       | chrisallenlane wrote:
       | TIL that my `.xsession-errors` file is ~16GB. Thanks, `ncdu`!
       | 
       | (I should probably look into this...)
        
         | andrewstuart2 wrote:
         | > This is fine.
        
       | staunch wrote:
       | Despite trying these tools many times, I still find myself just
       | running `du -sm * | sort -g`. It works and it's easy to pipe to
       | grep, etc.
        
       | luke-stanley wrote:
       | I have used ncdu for a long time, and it's good if you have time
       | to wait for it to get sizes, if you can't, Duc AKA "Dude, where
       | are my bytes" has caching and is ready to apt install on Debian
       | and Ubuntu repos https://duc.zevv.nl and it has different GUI
       | options. It's slightly more complex but for larger volumes I use
       | it instead of ncdu.
        
       | patwolf wrote:
       | I never knew about this tool, but it looks quite useful--much
       | better than just using df.
       | 
       | The only thing I wish it had was a squarified treemap view of
       | disk space. There was an old graphical tool for Windows called
       | SequoiaView that I used to use years ago, and I've never found a
       | worthy replacement for it on Linux or MacOS.
        
         | warp wrote:
         | GrandPerspective is in the mac app store and at least for my
         | needs was similar enough to SequoiaView.
        
         | ruined wrote:
         | sequoiaview looks like a clone of kdirstat, which is available
         | on all platforms.
        
         | flir wrote:
         | Try https://www.derlien.com/ - GPL. Might fit your needs.
        
       | macote wrote:
       | The best tool I've used on Windows for that is "Scanner" by
       | Steffen Gerlach:
       | 
       | http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/
        
         | thecosmicfrog wrote:
         | I find myself using WinDirStat on Windows systems, but often
         | use ncdu in WSL.
        
           | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
           | On Windows, you should switch to WizTree. Rather than
           | recursively calling directory listing functions, it directly
           | reads and parses the file tables itself. This makes it orders
           | of magnitude faster. I have a 2 TB hard drive full of a
           | million files, and WizTree reads and parses it all in under a
           | minute, whereas I can expect WinDirStat to take half an hour.
           | 
           | On an SSD, WizTree only takes a couple seconds.
        
             | thecosmicfrog wrote:
             | Thanks for the suggestion!
        
         | wereallterrrist wrote:
         | `dua`, discussed elsewhere in this thread also works on
         | windows, just for another option.
        
         | aftbit wrote:
         | I use WinDirStat on Windows
         | 
         | https://windirstat.net/
        
           | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
           | You should switch to WizTree. Rather than recursively calling
           | directory listing functions, it directly reads and parses the
           | file tables itself. This makes it orders of magnitude faster.
           | I have a 2 TB hard drive full of a million files, and WizTree
           | reads and parses it all in under a minute, whereas I can
           | expect WinDirStat to take half an hour.
           | 
           | On an SSD, WizTree only takes a couple seconds.
        
         | electroly wrote:
         | WizTree is vastly faster than the other options presented here
         | (Scanner, SpaceSniffer, WinDirStat).
        
           | antisthenes wrote:
           | It's also the one that's much more regularly updated.
        
           | Sakos wrote:
           | Switched to this a few years ago. Far better than anything
           | else I've tried.
        
           | password4321 wrote:
           | WizTree v3.33 is the last 'donationware' version vs. free for
           | personal use now.
           | 
           | https://diskanalyzer.com/wiztree-old-versions
        
         | Farow wrote:
         | I'm personally a fan of SpaceSniffer:
         | http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/index.html
        
           | macote wrote:
           | Thanks for sharing! I really like the real time update during
           | progress. You sometimes have to wait a very long time in
           | Scanner before you see the result.
        
           | flir wrote:
           | While we're listing them, Disk Inventory X
           | (https://www.derlien.com/)
        
       | Havoc wrote:
       | It's a neat tool. Not quite clear why it's #1 on hn though?
        
       | aftbit wrote:
       | One I don't see mentioned here is xdiskusage (for Linux) which
       | gives a nice 20th century style X11 tree view of your disk usage.
       | 
       | xdiskusage -qa /
        
       | mtooth wrote:
       | ncdu is one of the most useful CLI tools out there! Been using it
       | for many years as well.
       | 
       | Another disk scanner worth plugging that I came across for some
       | use cases where I needed to generate single-view reports is pdu -
       | it has the same concurrency implementation that other ncdu
       | alternatives use so the performance is much better too.
       | 
       | https://github.com/KSXGitHub/parallel-disk-usage
        
       | jwr wrote:
       | Such a great tool. Thank you!
       | 
       | On a Mac, I've been using OmniDiskSweeper for years, but this can
       | be run in a single directory and on my Linux machines as well.
       | Fantastic!
       | 
       | And look, it didn't ask me to sign up for an account, and it
       | didn't require me to consent to usage data collection with a huge
       | Privacy Policy attached! How is that possible? (still dealing
       | with this morning's scars from trying, and failing to run the
       | warp terminal)
        
         | gfxgirl wrote:
         | now if it was just an executable file and didn't require a
         | package manager or compiling to install it would be flawless.
        
       | zoobab wrote:
       | Love the tool.
        
       | HPsquared wrote:
       | Named after Enkidu, the ancient Sumerian mythological figure?
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enkidu
        
         | mhitza wrote:
         | Most likely just a coincidence due to abbreviating _NC_ urses
         | _D_ isk _U_ sage
        
           | gchamonlive wrote:
           | Dense
           | 
           | Edit, to spell it out: op was surely joking
        
       | teddyh wrote:
       | Old-school alternative:                 du -ax / | xdu -n -c 9
        
       | mahemola wrote:
       | Nice GUI to `du -h --max-depth=1 .` or `du --max-depth=1 . | sort
       | -n -r`
        
         | pilif wrote:
         | The other big advantage over just being a gui is that it Scans
         | the filesystem ahead of time and keeps the data across your
         | navigation into directories.
         | 
         | du will have to rescan as you traverse down the tree
        
           | netsharc wrote:
           | The subsequent scans feel a lot faster, I suspect due to
           | caching.
        
       | LeSaucy wrote:
       | ncdu and /var/lib/docker, name a better combo.
        
         | wereallterrrist wrote:
         | `docker system prune -af` ?
        
       | SSchick wrote:
       | This tool has been pretty invaluable to me over the years in
       | diagnosing/tracing high disk usage, particularly relevant for
       | pypi and npm packages that were needlessly shipping huge
       | artifacts.
        
       | rwmj wrote:
       | Nice tool - although with remote machines my go-to tool is KDE
       | filelight, the joy of remote X11.
        
       | milderworkacc wrote:
       | I love ncdu and install it on all of my machines. But at the risk
       | of sounding like a broken record - why isn't its functionality
       | baked into stock file managers on windows and Linux?
       | 
       | Why can't either of these systems do what the Mac has been able
       | to do since the 90s, and display the recursive size of a
       | directory in bytes in the file manager, allowing one to sort
       | directories by recursive size?
       | 
       | I am not exaggerating to say this is the single biggest roadblock
       | to my permanent migration to Linux!
       | 
       | (I would love nothing more than to hear I'm wrong and "you fool,
       | Dolphin can do that with flag: foo"!)
        
         | dotancohen wrote:
         | The Bash CLI is my file manager. So I've got ncdu built right
         | in. Try it, you'll love it. I almost never touch the rodent.
        
           | tetris11 wrote:
           | Except that running "ls" doesn't show you the directory
           | content size, and "ncdu" requires the user to make a tea
           | first. The above poster is right in saying that having this
           | built-in to the filesystem metrics would be a huge win.
        
             | j33zusjuice wrote:
             | But `du -h -d1` does, though, or `tree ---du -h`.
        
         | jinnko wrote:
         | ranger has this built in
        
           | ShinTakuya wrote:
           | Yeah but I'm not aware of any repos that use it as a stock
           | file manager..
        
         | COGlory wrote:
         | I'm not sure what exactly you're asking for, but Dolphin shows
         | me the size of a directory. You may have to right click and
         | update it from time to time.
        
       | Doctor_Fegg wrote:
       | ncdu is fabulous. I used it a while back on my 2009 Mac mini and
       | recovered 40GB of disk space. 8GB of this was in just four
       | folders: ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice,
       | /private/var/db/systemstats,
       | /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.coresymbolicationd, and
       | /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store.
        
       | crawsome wrote:
        
       | justusw wrote:
       | This program is extremely useful. I have recently performed a
       | recovery on a bricked Microsoft Surface and was able to extract
       | all the useful files from a Windows home directory and quickly
       | discard all the libraries, caches, and so on. By seeing the
       | folders that take up the most space you can easily determine what
       | the juicy bits in a folder hierarchy are. Huge time saver.
       | 
       | Using GrandPerspective on macOS was a similar revelation, but
       | ncdu being keyboard driven and allowing you to quickly launch a
       | shell inside each folder and then apply find -exec there quickly
       | is a productivity boost on yet another level.
        
       | farresito wrote:
       | If you like ncdu, you might also like dua[0]. You can run `dua i`
       | to get an interface similar to ncdu, and can also run `dua` to
       | list file sizes in the current directory, similar to `du`. Or
       | `dua _filename_ ` to get the size of a given file.
       | 
       | [0] https://github.com/Byron/dua-cli
        
         | lathiat wrote:
         | The UI is not as good but it's multi threaded and much faster.
        
         | f1refly wrote:
         | Not in any repo, I'll pass, thanks
        
           | wereallterrrist wrote:
           | Diistinctly not true. `nix run github:nixos/nixpkgs/nixos-
           | unstable#dua`
        
           | BlackLotus89 wrote:
           | Actually it is in the arch community repositories and seems
           | to be quiet a bit faster than ncdu so I will keep it in my
           | toolbox for now.
           | 
           | Painpoints are that there seems to be no progress bar in
           | interactive mode, the ui is (imho) ugly/unintuitive (for
           | instance the usage bar seems to be relative? and the
           | shortcuts look like glyphs) and there are functions missing
           | (like exclude patterns, you can exclude dirs though!).
           | 
           | So it won't replace ncdu, but if it get a interactive
           | progressbar maybe it will be on all my machines (with arch)
        
       | 0x00101010 wrote:
       | dua: https://github.com/Byron/dua-cli dust:
       | https://github.com/bootandy/dust
        
       | LeoPanthera wrote:
       | See also tkdu for a graphical version: https://github.com/daniel-
       | beck/tkdu
       | 
       | It's abandoned but it still works, and I like it because you can
       | pipe the output of du into it, which is useful for visualizing
       | remote systems.
        
       | brazzledazzle wrote:
       | I use ncdu a lot. It's not strictly necessary but it's really
       | nice to have in the toolbox. Also IIRC there is a standalone
       | binary available which comes in handy when you can't install
       | packages on a full filesystem.
        
       | XiS wrote:
       | Best tool I've ever used for finding where I could free up some
       | disk space
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-07 23:00 UTC)