Quick tip: Determining the folder size from the command line

Disk space is sometimes an overlooked resource. A server that runs out of disk space stops writing logs, fails database writes, and can crash entirely. That's why I would like to provide a quick tip about determining the size of a folder by using the command line. As always when using the Linux command line, there's a useful tool available. In this case the build-in tool du will provide us with a solution.

du -hs [folder]

Example:

du -hs /data/backup/

Output:

106G /data/backup/

More information about du can be found in the manpage.