How to find out how much disk space is remaining?

You can use two commands: df and du.

df - report file system disk space usage

Usage works like such:

df -h

Which should output something like this:

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vzfs              20G  3.5G   16G  18% /

The -h flag provides human readable output (which makes reading of the output - easier).

du - estimate file space usage

A second tool is with du which is a slower approach but will give you a better break down of a per directory. Information on that can be found in How to determine where the biggest files/directories on my system are stored?


There are several good command line tools for reporting disk usage. Use the one that's most helpful to you:

df

$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1              56G  4.4G   48G   9% /
none                  1.5G  256K  1.5G   1% /dev
none                  1.5G  472K  1.5G   1% /dev/shm
none                  1.5G  400K  1.5G   1% /var/run
none                  1.5G     0  1.5G   0% /var/lock
tmpfs                 1.5G  596K  1.5G   1% /var/log
tmpfs                 1.5G  8.0K  1.5G   1% /var/log/apt
/dev/sdb2             840G  579G  253G  70% /home

df is installed by default.

pydf

$ pydf
Filesystem  Size  Used Avail Use%                               Mounted on
/dev/sda1    55G 4437M   48G  7.9 [##.........................] /         
none       1506M  256k 1505M  0.0 [...........................] /dev      
/dev/sdb2   839G  578G  252G 68.9 [###################........] /home

Column headers are colored.

discus

$ discus
Mount           Total         Used         Avail      Prcnt      Graph
/               55.02 GB      4.33 GB     50.69 GB     7.9%   [*---------]
/sys                0 KB         0 KB         0 KB     0.0%   [----------]
+onnections         0 KB         0 KB         0 KB     0.0%   [----------]
+rnel/debug         0 KB         0 KB         0 KB     0.0%   [----------]
+l/security         0 KB         0 KB         0 KB     0.0%   [----------]
/dev             1.47 GB       256 KB      1.47 GB     0.0%   [----------]
/dev/shm         1.48 GB       472 KB      1.48 GB     0.0%   [----------]
/var/run         1.48 GB       400 KB      1.48 GB     0.0%   [----------]
/var/lock        1.48 GB         0 KB      1.48 GB     0.0%   [----------]
/var/log         1.48 GB       596 KB      1.48 GB     0.0%   [----------]
+ar/log/apt      1.48 GB         8 KB      1.48 GB     0.0%   [----------]
/home          839.00 GB    578.13 GB    260.87 GB    68.9%   [*******---]
+infmt_misc         0 KB         0 KB         0 KB     0.0%   [----------]
+e/ak/.gvfs         0 KB         0 KB         0 KB     0.0%   [----------]

Column headers and progress bars are colored.

di

$ di
Filesystem         Mount              Mebis     Used    Avail %Used fs Type
/dev/sda1          /                56340.2   4436.7  49041.6  13%  ext4   
/dev/sdb2          /home           859138.9 592008.8 258401.8  70%  ext4   
tmpfs              /var/log          1511.2      0.6   1510.6   0%  tmpfs  
tmpfs              /var/log/apt      1511.2      0.0   1511.2   0%  tmpfs

You can use this command to find out how much space files in your home directory (replace ~/ with / for entire filesystem) and sort by largest files

du -sk ~/* | sort -n