Linux Commandline Tips #1: Listing the top 20 largest directories from your current directory

Background

For a long time, I've been looking for somewhere to post a small number of bash scripts I've borrowed/hacked from various places online, and Steemit seems to be the most natural place to create a repository of short, but useful scripts that I use on a daily basis.

Today's Script

This script lists the top 20 directories from your current directory downwards, in terms of size.

Why might this be important?

Simple answer: if you manage/own a hard drive or web server (I manage a few VPS servers), then you want a quick way to see which directories have become bloated, and delete unwanted files accordingly.

Webservers can particularly get full, quickly, if there are various backup scripts running.

Here's the Script:

du -h . | sort -nr| grep [0-9]M | head -20

Normally, I'll put this into a file in /usr/local/bin, as follows:

sudo echo "du -h . | sort -nr| grep [0-9]M | head -20" > /usr/local/bin/whatsup



sudo chmod +x  $!

The above commands enable me to use this command:

whatsup

...to list those top 20 offending bloated directories.

So there you go: a simple script to quickly enable me to track down bloated directories, so I can then dive in, and remove backup files that haven't yet been deleted automatically.

Hope that helps!

Dez.

Author BIO

Dez Futak is a serial entrepreneur who helps local businesses & individuals increase their cashflow. For more details, see the Services menu at DezFutak.com