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Asked: 2010-05-23 08:56:50 +0800 CST

How do I see du in GB instead of MB in linux?

  • 772

This works:

du -cshm .

But this fails:

du -cshg .

How can I see it in unit of GB?

linux bash

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    GNU du has the --block-size option:

    du -csh --block-size=1G .

    As sajb noted, omitting the block size argument will automatically scale the output (and display the unit). Using any block size argument displays the number but omits the unit.

    • 56

  2. For convenience, here's reference for macOS:

    • -h "Human-readable" output. Use unit suffixes: Byte, Kilobyte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte and Petabyte.
    • -k Display block counts in 1024-byte (1-Kbyte) blocks.
    • -m Display block counts in 1,048,576-byte (1-Mbyte) blocks.
    • -g Display block counts in 1,073,741,824-byte (1-Gbyte) blocks.

    Here is how the various options work given a 1,234,567 KB file:

    $ mkfile -n 1234567k file.txt

$ du file.txt
2469136 file.txt

$ du -k file.txt
1234568 file.txt

$ du -m file.txt
1206    file.txt

$ du -g file.txt
2   file.txt

$ du -h file.txt
1.2G    file.txt

    Also worth noting, you can configure implicit behaviour though the BLOCKSIZE environment variable:

    BLOCKSIZE If the environment variable BLOCKSIZE is set, and the -k option is not specified, the block counts will be displayed in units of that size block. If BLOCKSIZE is not set, and the -k option is not specified, the block counts will be displayed in 512-byte blocks.

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  3. Use du -B1073741824 but beware, it gives the result in integer-units only, and won't be meaningful with -h

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  4. In addition to the previous answers, it also seems to differ between different coreutils versions (or locale?), since on my host I get:

    $ du -csh .
32G     .
32G     total
$ du --version | head -1
du (GNU coreutils) 7.4
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