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

  • linuxPIPEpower@discuss.tchncs.deOP
    0·
    8 months ago

    hmm I didn’t think to actually test the results. But now that i do, I get same sort of descrepency.

    How about this?

    eza --long -h --total-size --sort=size --no-permissions --no-user --no-time -a --blocksize --binary

    that works in a couple test directories with the column Blocksize.

    Also it might (??) be ignoring according to your gitignore if that is relevant? Or behaving differently wrt symlinks?

    Seems like the default behavior should be whatever is most expected, standard and obvious. Or else give user a hint.

    I find this in the repo, is t relevant?: bug: Inconsistent Size Display in `exa` Command for Large Files (1024 vs. 1000 Conversion) · Issue #519.

    don’t forget eza --version. I find it is not updated quickly in every distro. See changelog; it looks like there might have been a relevant update as recently as [0.18.6] - 2024-03-06. Actual my system is only updated to 0.17.3 now that I check this too.

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
      0·
      8 months ago

      With --binary option I get size of 174Mi in eza. Experimenting with some other options didn’t help. If something is ignored (maybe gitignore), then it would be that du AND Dolphin filemanager would ignore those files, and eza would not. Which its hard to believe for me. I also deleted the .gitignore and .git files/folder to see if it makes any difference and no, it did not.

      The only thing I can think of is maybe something going on with link files, but no idea how or what to test for here.

      • linuxPIPEpower@discuss.tchncs.deOP
        0·
        8 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
          1·
          8 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. :-(