du (disk usage by directory) in Linux CLI - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Disk Usage Summary with du Command

📖 Scenario: You are managing files on your Linux system. You want to check how much disk space different directories use to keep your system organized and avoid running out of space.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple script that uses the du command to show disk usage of directories in a specified folder, filter results by a size threshold, and display the filtered output.

📋 What You'll Learn

Use the du command to get disk usage of directories

Create a variable to hold the target directory path

Create a variable to hold the minimum size threshold in kilobytes

Filter the du output to show only directories larger than the threshold

Print the filtered disk usage results

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

System administrators often need to monitor disk usage to prevent storage issues and optimize space.

💼 Career

Knowing how to use disk usage commands and filter their output is essential for Linux system management and troubleshooting.

1

Set the target directory

Create a variable called target_dir and set it to "/var/log" to specify the directory you want to check disk usage for.

Linux CLI

# Create a variable called target_dir and set it to "/var/log"
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use target_dir="/var/log" to set the directory path.

2

Set the minimum size threshold

Create a variable called min_size and set it to 1000 to represent the minimum directory size in kilobytes for filtering.

Linux CLI

target_dir="/var/log"
# Create a variable called min_size and set it to 1000
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use min_size=1000 to set the size threshold in KB.

3

Get and filter disk usage

Use the du -k --max-depth=1 "$target_dir" command to get disk usage in kilobytes for directories inside target_dir. Then use awk to filter and keep only lines where the size is greater than or equal to min_size. Store the filtered output in a variable called filtered_usage.

Linux CLI

target_dir="/var/log"
min_size=1000
# Use du and awk to filter directories by min_size and save to filtered_usage
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use du -k --max-depth=1 "$target_dir" piped to awk -v min="$min_size" '$1 >= min'.

4

Display the filtered disk usage

Print the contents of the filtered_usage variable to show the directories that meet the size threshold.

Linux CLI

target_dir="/var/log"
min_size=1000
filtered_usage=$(du -k --max-depth=1 "$target_dir" | awk -v min="$min_size" '$1 >= min')
# Print the filtered_usage variable
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use echo "$filtered_usage" to display the filtered results.