How to know total number of bytes of a directory

[Andy Greenwood]

DAve wrote:
> Andy Greenwood wrote:
>   
>> DSA - JCR wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi all
>>>
>>> I would like to know the total number of bytes of a directory and its
>>> related subdirs, occupied by the files inside it. I haven't found any
>>> command for knowning it.
>>>   
>>>       
>> # du -s /etc
>> 17008   /etc
>>
>> You need read privs to all the subdirectories, otherwise you'll get
>> permission errors and it'll skip those. Note that this displays usage in
>> 512-byte blocks, not bytes, but you should be able to figure it out from
>> there.
>>     
>
> -h provides human readable output.
> du -sh /etc
> 3.8M    /etc
>
> DAve
>
>   

Ahh, I had forgotten about -h. I ususally use du -s * | sort -rn  | head 
to find the biggest files/directories in a given directory, and if you 
use -h, you'll get stuff out of order, since 3.8M will come after 4.2K 
in a reversed numerical sort.