Disk & Filesystem Management (Du/Df/Lsblk/Fstrim)

Quit staring at confusing du output when the disk is full

🧩 The Challenge

You get the alert that a partition is at 98% and you run du -sh * just to be met with a wall of text that makes your eyes bleed. Most of the time you’re just guessing which folder is actually bloated.

💡 The Fix

Use the –max-depth flag paired with sort to cut through the noise instantly. It isolates the top-level offenders so you can stop clicking into subdirectories like a chump.

du -ahx --max-depth=1 /var/log | sort -hr | head -n 10

⚙️ Why It Works

Adding the -x flag keeps you from accidentally diving into mounted filesystems, while sorting by human-readable numeric values puts the actual problems right at the top.

🚀 Pro-Tip: Pipe it into awk if you just want the list of paths without the file sizes cluttering up your terminal.

Linux Tips & Tricks | © ngelinux.com | 8/15/2026