How to find the largest files/folders on the server
Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2024 3:15 pm
To find the largest files on the server:
Logged in as 'root', in your SSH console run:
Or scan only /home :
All commands from this tutorial can take a while to execute, so be patient.
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Finding largest folder is a bit complicated .
You must start from the root of your server ( / folder) and then see largest folder at first level, and then go down to the inner folder levels.
Output will be:
(given values are in megabytes)
From this output, we can conclude that /home is the largest folder.
Now we should check /home sub-folders:
Output will be:
From this output, we can conclude that /home/myuser is the largest sub-folder.
Now we should check /home/myuser sub-folders:
... etc ... until you locate final folder or group of folders that you can consider as problematic large.
Logged in as 'root', in your SSH console run:
Code: Select all
find / -type f -ls 2>/dev/null | grep -v ' /proc/\| /var/lib/\| /boot' | awk '{print $7" "$5":"$6" ("$9"."$8"/"$9":"$10") "$11 $12 $13 $14 $15 $16 $17 $18 $19 $20}' | sort -h | tail -50 | column -t
Code: Select all
find /home/ -type f -ls 2>/dev/null | awk '{print $7" "$5":"$6" ("$9"."$8"/"$9":"$10") "$11 $12 $13 $14 $15 $16 $17 $18 $19 $20}' | sort -h | tail -50 | column -t
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Finding largest folder is a bit complicated .
You must start from the root of your server ( / folder) and then see largest folder at first level, and then go down to the inner folder levels.
Code: Select all
du --max-depth=1 -c -m -x / | sort -n
Code: Select all
1 /lost+found
1 /media
1 /mnt
1 /nonexistent
1 /opt
1 /srv
12 /etc
31 /tmp
109 /root
2400 /usr
127523 /var
269009 /home
407067 /
407067 total
From this output, we can conclude that /home is the largest folder.
Now we should check /home sub-folders:
Code: Select all
du --max-depth=1 -c -m -x /home | sort -n
Code: Select all
1 /home/admin
1 /home/blank
643 /home/sites
268365 /home/myuser
269009 /home
269009 total
Now we should check /home/myuser sub-folders:
Code: Select all
du --max-depth=1 -c -m -x /home/myuser | sort -n