Freeing space on / (root)

[Rogelio Quintanilla]

Hi friends
Which one could be the best way to know which folders or files are using more space on a path (in my case, root).

I just want to know this information specifically for this filesystem, because it is reaching its limit.

Thanks in advance for any suggestion!!!

Best regards

RQT

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

The first thing I'd check is /dev/rmt/ and make sure there are no files there like om (instead of 0m) that are large.

To see what directories are taking up space do:

# cd /
# du -kx | sort +n

this will give you a list of directories in / (without crossing mountpoints) and sort them in size order.

[Denver Osborn]

Try:

du -kx /

Each directory under root will be in 1024-byte blocs.

-denver

[Paul Sperry]

Try

cd /
du -sk *

[Uday_S_Ankolekar]

du -sk * in / will give you the list of directories with occupied size. Most of the time it's /var that gets filled up.

Use find command to see which file(s) is taking lots of place in /var
EX:
find /var -size +100000c -exec ls -al {} \;

Increase or decrease the number of zeroes to look for the desired file size

-USA..

[Jose Mosquera]

Hi,

This will be you useful:

du / -akx|sort -nr|more

Rgds.

[James Odak]

if your searcing root for large files

find / -xdev -size +2000 -depth -print -exec ls -la {} \;

raise or lower the value from 2000 as needed

the -xdev keeps the search within the root FS and will not scan /var /opt and such

[Rogelio Quintanilla]

Thank you very much folks!
All you, gave me really usefull information.

Best Regards

RQT

[Bill Hassell]

As mentioned, du will give you the directory usage. Once you locate large directories, look inside to find big files. To sort files by size, do this:

ll | sort -rnk5 | more -e

Note that / never grows except by mistake. The most common reason is mispelled device files (tpyically in /dev/rmt) and bad applications that store their files in /.