dust — disk usage visualization

💬 "dust Command"

dust is a disk usage visualization tool that displays disk usage in a tree format, serving as a replacement for du.

It visualizes space usage per directory with bars. Unlike du, it sorts the results visually, showing the largest folders first.

• Concept: Visualizes space usage per directory with bars.
• Key Features: Unlike du, sorts the results visually, showing the largest folders first.
• Advantages: Instantly identify folders consuming the most space.
• Usage: Exclusion patterns can remove specific directories from the measurement.

Installation and Download

dust is installed via a package manager or the official script.

Verify the installation with dust --version.

Frequently Used Options

3 Essential Command Combinations

• dust -d 2 /var — Check usage under /var up to 2 levels deep
• dust -X node_modules . — Measure excluding node_modules
• dust -n /home — Check usage with file count

💬 "Show me an example of using dust on an actual server"

Here's a step-by-step guide for common scenarios encountered on production servers.

Step 1 · Verify Installation

Check if it is installed.

dust --version || sudo apt install -y du-dust

Step 2 · Check Root Entirely

Find the cause of a full disk.

dust -d 1 /

Step 3 · Specific Directory

Check details of the log directory.

dust -d 2 /var/log

Actual Execution Screen

Result of checking disk root usage with dust. It displays the largest folders first as bars.

!dust command execution result

Actual production server

How It's Used in Practice

1. Check Before Log Cleanup

Situation — Check if logs are consuming a lot of space.

dust -d 2 /var/log

Result — You can see that nginx/access.log accounts for most of it.

Point — Cleanup is only possible after identifying what's consuming the space.

2. Inspect Backup Directory

Situation — Quickly check the size of backup folders.

dust /backup

Result — Sizes of each backup folder are shown as bars.

Point — You can find and clean up old backups.

Actual Execution Screen

Result of checking the space distribution in the log directory.

!dust command execution result 2

Actual production server

Points to Note

• dust requires measurement time. Scanning the entire root can take several minutes.
• Using the -X option to exclude large directories like node_modules, .git makes the results more accurate.
• On Debian/Ubuntu, the package name is du-dust.
• Directories without permissions are excluded from measurement.

Source (HTML): https://games.aidebatehub.com/programs/linux/modern/dust.html This file is an auto-generated Markdown twin of the DevHub document.