[PLUG] Disk space question using LVM

[Paul Heinlein]

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004, Aaron Baer wrote:

>> I'd do
>>
>>    du -sh /*
>
> I'm a big fan of adding --max-depth=1 that way you don't see all the 
> gobldygook flying by and can track down the exact directory first to 
> start your hunt..
>
> du -h --max-depth=1

Interesting. My initial inclination was to blurt out that the 
following du invocations are nearly equivalent:

   du -h --max-depth=1 /
   du -sh /*

On review, however, I noticed some subtle but potentially significant 
differences:

1. The first will return the total for / in addition to the totals for
    each top-level directory.

2. Unless the -a (--all) option is given, the first will ignore
    non-directories, while the second will report on anything globbed
    by the shell wildcard.

3. The second is sorted alphabetically since the shell expands the
    wildcard before passing the list to du.

4. The second will ignore "invisible" directories (those beginning
    with a .).

Points 2 and 4 probably aren't significant for the root directory, but 
they certainly would be elsewhere in the file system...

-- Paul Heinlein <heinlein at madboa.com>