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user37342
Asked: 2020-11-04 01:59:02 +0800 CST

How many files do I have?

  • 772

If I as root in Nautilus at the top directory open the properties I get:

Name: /

Type: Folder (inode/directory)

Contents: 1 560 503 items, totalling 414,8 GB

Trying root@nilx:/# locate * | wc I get

2997356 3450407 217324980

and root@nilx:/# tree -ia gives me

277432 directories, 3293850 files

(directories+files=277432+3293850=3571282)

So how many files do I have?

nautilus files locate tree

1 Answers

  1. locate is not suitable to count files!

    It relies on what is saved in the updatedb database. But it leaves out some directories from the database when scanning. See /etc/updatedb.conf

    PRUNEPATHS="/tmp /var/spool /media /var/lib/os-prober /var/lib/ceph /home/.ecryptfs /var/lib/schroot".

    Nautilus defaults to not include hidden files in the Contents/Totalling section, you have to explicitly enable "show hidden files". Also it does not decend into other file systems, it does report the same as tree -ixa / though.

    tree should work just fine.

    But you could also use find, which should be faster than tree:

    find / -printf . | wc -c
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