How to install NCurses Disk Usage (ncdu) similar to ‘du’ on Linux

Ncdu is a disk usage analyzer based on ncurses. It provides a disk usage summary in a TUI (Text user interface) and finding large files and folders is really simple. ncdu is a curses-based version of the well-known “du” command in Linux, and provides a fast way to see what directories are using your disk space.

In order to install ncdu, you will first need to enable the EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprises Linux) repo as shown below:

How to enable EPEL Repo:

For EL5:

[root@openstack export]# rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm

For EL6:

[root@openstack export]# rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

For EL7:

[root@openstack export]# rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7/x86_64/e/epel-release-7-5.noarch.rpm

How to install ncdu

Once the EPEL repo is enabled, you can install ncdu with the following command:

Note: In case, if you don’t have ncurses installed, you can install it using ‘yum install ncurses‘.

[root@openstack export]# yum install ncdu
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, presto
Setting up Install Process
::::::::
::::::::

  Installing : ncdu-1.11-1.el6.x86_64          1/1
  Verifying  : ncdu-1.11-1.el6.x86_64          1/1

Installed:  ncdu.x86_64 0:1.11-1.el6

Complete!

How to use ncdu

Run the below command to see the disk usage of present working directory (pwd).

[root@openstack ~]# ncdu

The above command shows the disk usage under the root’s home directory.

To find the disk usage of specific directory, you can either navigate to the directory and issue the command ‘ncdu’ or issue the command ‘ncdu /lib/’

[root@openstack lib]# ncdu

or

[root@openstack ~]# ncdu /lib/

You can see the scanning of directories and the results in the below image:

Scan full filesystem

[root@openstack ~]# ncdu -x /

Keyboard shortcuts

?                   for help
up, k               Move cursor up
down, j             Move cursor down
right/enter         Open selected directory
left, <, h          Open parent directory
n                   Sort by name (ascending/descending)
s                   Sort by size (ascending/descending)
g                   Show percentage and/or graph 
i                   Show information about selected item      
r                   Recalculate the current directory
q                   quit