Arch Linux

colbert

Member

Registered: 2007-12-16

Posts: 809

Help me to understand directory sizes :)

I use CLI and thunar for file management, and I'm confused about why directories show as multiples of 4? I only seem them as 4kb, 12kb, 36kb, etc. How can I tell how big a directory is seeing only these numbers? I normally use "du -h" or "du -sh" just fine in CLI but in thunar it stumps me if I quickly need to determine a folder size. Any clarification much appreciated, thanks

Leigh

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2004-06-25

Posts: 533

Re: Help me to understand directory sizes :)

I don't use Thunar, but I think I remember reading about a bug where it was displaying dir sizes wrong. It was some time ago, and I can't remember how old the bug was.

---

-- archlinux 是一个极好的 linux。

roadt

Member

Registered: 2007-10-18

Posts: 26

Re: Help me to understand directory sizes :)

The directory is a kind of file in linux, a special file.
the content of directory-file  is the filename list and related info ,it include.
So the 4k, 12kb, 36kb should be the size of the directory-file itself, not  the total size of all its descendant file/directories.

This is the normal size shown in the file manager (like thunar..).
It can be divided by 4k, probably, because the size of your disk storage unit (node) is 4k.

for thunar itself , i doesn't find the good way to get the total directoy size(total size of all descendants),
except that right-click mouse button  and choose the "properties" of  your directory.

for quickly looking through the total sizes of more than single directory,  try xdiskusage