cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/13814482

I just noticed that eza can now display total disk space used by directories!

I think this is pretty cool. I wanted it for a long time.

There are other ways to get the information of course. But having it integrated with all the other options for listing directories is fab. eza has features like --git-awareness, --tree display, clickable --hyperlink, filetype --icons and other display, permissions, dates, ownerships, and other stuff. being able to mash everything together in any arbitrary way which is useful is handy. And of course you can --sort=size

docs:

  --total-size               show the size of a directory as the size of all
                             files and directories inside (unix only)

It also (optionally) color codes the information. Values measures in kb, mb, and gb are clear. Here is a screenshot to show that:

eza --long -h --total-size --sort=oldest --no-permissions --no-user

Of course it take a little while to load large directories so you will not want to use by default.

Looks like it was first implemented Oct 2023 with some fixes since then. (Changelog). PR #533 - feat: added recursive directory parser with `–total-size` flag by Xemptuous

  • linuxPIPEpowerOP
    2·
    7 months ago

    well I guess a way to test would be to create a new directory and copy or create some files into it rather than using a working directory where there are unknown complexities. IIRC dd can create files according to parameters.

    Start with a single file in a normal location and see how to get it to output the correct info and complicate things until you can find out where it breaks.

    That’s what I would do, but maybe a dev would have a more sophisticated method. Might be worth while to read the PR where the feature was introduced.

    Also kind of a shot in the dark but do you have an ext4 filesystem? I have been dabbling with btrfs lately and it leads to some strange behaviors. Like some problems with rsync. Ideally this tool would be working properly for all use cases but it’s new so perhaps the testing would be helpful. I also noticed that this feature is unix only. I didn’t read about why.

    it would be that du AND Dolphin filemanager would ignore those files, and eza would not. Which its hard to believe for me.

    Although only 1 of various potential causes, I don’t think it is implausible on its face. du probably doesn’t know about git at all right? If nautilus has a VCS extension installed I doubt it would specifically ignore for the purposes of calculating file size.

    I have found a lot of these rust alternatives ignore .git and other files a little too aggressively for my taste. Both fd (find), and ag (grep) require 1-2 arguments to include dotfiles, git-ignored and other files. There are other defaults that I suppose make lots of sense in certain contexts. Often I can’t find something I know is there and eventually it turns out it’s being ignored somehow.

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
      5·
      7 months ago

      About the gitignore stuff of Rust tools: Its the opposite for my results, in that eza has bigger size. And the fact that the independent program Dolphin filemanager aligns with the output of the standard du tool (for which I don’t have a config file I think) speaks for being the more correct output.

      Ok so I found it: Hardlinks

      $ \ls -l
total 9404
-rwxr-xr-x 2 tuncay tuncay 4810688  5. Apr 10:47 build-script-main
-rwxr-xr-x 2 tuncay tuncay 4810688  5. Apr 10:47 build_script_main-947fc87152b779c9
-rw-r--r-- 1 tuncay tuncay    2298  5. Apr 10:47 build_script_main-947fc87152b779c9.d

$ md5sum *
6ce0dea7ef5570667460c6ecb47fb598  build-script-main
6ce0dea7ef5570667460c6ecb47fb598  build_script_main-947fc87152b779c9
68e78f30049466b4ca8fe1f4431dbe64  build_script_main-947fc87152b779c9.d

      I went down into the directories and compared some outputs until I could circle it down (is it called like that?). Look at the number 2, which means those files are hardlink. Their md5 checksum are identical. So its what I was thinking all along, some kind of linking weirdness (which in itself is not weird at all). So eza is not aware of hardlinks and count them as individual files, which is simply wrong, from perspective of how much space those files occupy. The file exists once on the disk and requires only one time space.

      EDIT: BTW sorry that my replies turned your news post into a troubleshooting post. :-(

      • linuxPIPEpowerOP
        2·
        7 months ago

        For my part I think all this troublefinding and troublesolving is a great use of a thread. :D Especially if it gets turned into a bug report and eventually PR. I had a quick look in the repo and I don’t see anything relevant but it could be hidden where I can’t see it. Since you’ve already gone and found the problem it would be a shame to leave it here where it’ll never be found or seen. Hope you will send to them.

        I also reproduce the bug by moving an ISO file into a directory then hardlinking it in the same dir. Each file is counted individually and the dir is 2x the size it should be! I can’t find any way to fix it.

        The best I can come up with is to show the links but it only works when you look at the linked file itself:

        $ eza --long -h --total-size --sort=oldest --no-permissions --no-user --no-time --tree --links LinuxISOs
Links Size Name
    1 3.1G LinuxISOs
    2 1.5G ├── linux.iso
    2 1.5G └── morelinux.iso

        If you look further up the filetree you could never guess. (I will say again that my distro is not up to date with the latest release and it is possible this is already fixed.)

        This should be an option. In dua-cli, another one of the other rust terminal tools I love, you can choose:

        $ dua  LinuxISOs
      0   B morelinux.iso
   1.43 GiB linux.iso
   1.43 GiB total

$ dua --count-hard-links LinuxISOs
   1.43 GiB linux.iso
   1.43 GiB morelinux.iso
   2.86 GiB total
          • linuxPIPEpowerOP
            2·
            7 months ago

            Nice! I’m sure they will appreciate your thorough report.

            I wonder if they also plan to make an option about crossing filesystem boundaries. I have seen it commonly in this sort of use case.

            Maybe all this complexity this is the reason why total dir size has not previously been integrated into this kind of tool. (Notable exception: lsd if you are interested.) I really hope the development persists though because being able to easily manipulate so many different kinds of information about the filesystem without spending hours/days/weeks/years creating bespoke shell scripts is super handy.

            • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
              1·
              7 months ago

              I used lsd before switching to exa. BTW I was the one who suggested to integrated hyperlink option to lsd. :-) Not saying it wouldn’t be added otherwise, but at least it sped up the process back then.^^

              On the topic of filesystem boundaries, this is something I always have in mind. Hardlinks in example cannot be on two different drives, by its nature. It’s an option I use with my own du script often: -x . It helps to keep things in check and simplifies some things, as I have a complex of multiple drives that are mounted into my home from various places, plus the symbolic links from Steam and so on. Avoiding other filesystems is part of my “workflow”, if you so will and would like to see such an option as well.

              I just noticed exa has an option -H or --links to list each file’s number of hard links. So at least it is aware of hardlinks and could calculate the total size correctly.