How to check disk usage from the command line

Introduction

Managing disk usage is crucial for any system administrator. This article shows how to check a server's disk usage from the command line.

Procedure

1. Access the command line as the 'root' user via SSH or "Terminal" in WHM.
2. Use the df command to show the disk usage of each file system.
   

   [root@server -]cPs# df -h
   Filesystem  Size  Used  Avail Use%  Mounted on
   /dev/vda1    40G   18G    23G  45%  /
   devtmpfs    1.9G     0   1.9G   0%  /dev
   tmpfs       1.9G     0   1.9G   0%  /dev/shm
   tmpfs       1.9G   33M   1.9G   2%  /run
   tmpfs       1.9G     0   1.9G   0%  /sys/fs/cgroup
   /dev/loop0  477M  2.5M   449M   1%
   /tmp tmpfs  379M     0   379M   0%  /run/user/1000

3. Use the du command to show the disk usage of the server.
   Please note, virtual filesystems, such as /proc/and /sys, and bind mounts, such as /home/virtfs, need to be excluded from du since they do not take up space on the disk.

   [root@server -]cPs# du -hxd1 / --exclude=/proc --exclude=/sys --exclude=/home/virtfs
   59M /etc
   1.4G /root
   1.9G /var
   11G /usr
   371M /boot
   1.5G /home
   0 /media
   0 /mnt
   710M /opt
   0 /srv
   1.4G /backup
   18G /

4. You can then check individual directories by specifing the path in the du command. The following example is checking the /home directory. 

   [root@server -]cPs# du -hs /home --exclude=/home/virtfs
   252K /home

Additional resources

How to manage your disk usage