Find All Large Files On A Linux System

The best way to find large files on your Linux system is to use the command line. This how-to will suggest a few methods for listing such files in specific directories or complete file systems.

 

 

Before getting started, we suggest you Learn Linux Basics and follow these precautions.

 

 

Steps to follow

Option 1

This is a basic method for listing files of a certain size. Here we're searching the home directory of the user you're currently logged in as for files greater than 20MB.
find ~ -size +20M

Note: Alternatively, you may search for files less than a certain size by changing the + to a - and may also change the directory path to search.
Option 2a

For more detailed output, we can use find to search directories for files greater than 20MB, display the path and file size. In this example we're searching the entire file system, but you may choose to use a specific path.
find / -type f -size +20M -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print $NF ": " $5 }'

Option 2b

Find reports errors when it searches directories for which it has no permissions. This is attributed to not having administrative privileges, so you may want to su to root, otherwise, discard these errors by redirecting to /dev/null.

find / -type f -size +20M -exec ls -lh {} \; 2> /dev/null | awk '{ print $NF ": " $5 }'

Option 2c

Additionally, you may find it beneficial to sort (numerically) based on the size (second column).

find / -type f -size +20M -exec ls -lh {} \; 2> /dev/null | awk '{ print $NF ": " $5 }' | sort -nk 2,2

Output will be similar to this:
./Desktop/linuxlookup/.cache/tracker/file-index.db: 24M
./.mozilla/firefox/z65ywy3s.default/places.sqlite: 43M
./Desktop/linuxlookup/.evolution/mail/local/Inbox.sbd/ll: 98M
./Desktop/linuxlookup/dev/security-report.tar: 140M
..
Option 2d

Or reverse the sort order (larger files listed first) by using this.

find / -type f -size +20000k -exec ls -lh {} \; 2> /dev/null | awk '{ print $NF ": " $5 }' | sort -nrk 2,2

0 (0)
Article Rating (No Votes)
Rate this article
Attachments
There are no attachments for this article.
Comments
There are no comments for this article. Be the first to post a comment.
Full Name
Email Address
Security Code Security Code
Related Articles RSS Feed
Linux Find Large Files
Viewed 3062 times since Mon, Oct 29, 2018
Extending Linux LVM partitions - scripts
Viewed 6748 times since Sun, May 20, 2018
Linux / UNIX: Run Command a Number of Times In a Row
Viewed 16046 times since Tue, Aug 6, 2019
linux aix Killing a process and all of its descendants
Viewed 3968 times since Tue, May 5, 2020
How To: Linux Hard Disk Encryption With LUKS [ cryptsetup Command ]
Viewed 7467 times since Fri, Jul 13, 2018
RHEL: Resize/disable /dev/shm filesystem
Viewed 15173 times since Sun, May 27, 2018
Inxi – A Powerful Feature-Rich Commandline System Information Tool for Linux
Viewed 19039 times since Sat, Jun 2, 2018
ubuntu How to Reset Forgotten Passwords in Ubuntu 16.04
Viewed 3625 times since Tue, Dec 8, 2020
ZPOOL: Create a new zpool for zfs filesystems
Viewed 2378 times since Sun, Jun 3, 2018
Check a Website Availability from the Linux Command Line
Viewed 6801 times since Mon, Feb 18, 2019