missing diskspace

I have realized that nautilus is to blame. When you check the properties of a directory, it simply reports a size for that directory that might be below the actual value by a substantial margin. I have found inconsistencies ranging over as much as 20 GB.

My new question: Should I report this as a bug, or is natilus (for some to me unknown reason) behaving as it should?

Thx!

Hi

I'm not certain if it is a bug or not, but my guess is that it is not. When you check the properties of a directory in nautilus, it returns the amount of space used by the files in that directory only. It does not sum up space used by sub-directories, as the files in a sub-directory technically do not belong to the parent directory.

When I want to check disk space, I usually use this command in a terminal to get a summary by filesystem

df -h

If you want to see usage by directory, you can use this command. If you omit the top-directory-to-check argument, it will use the current directory as the top directory. Note that this command can create a LOT of output :)

du -hS top-directory-to-check

Hope this helps.

Hello. Your statement is not correct. An example follows.

/home is reported as having 71.5 GB, but it contains only two directories, and NO files. I'm afraid that proves your statement wrong.

One of these directories are reported as 68.3 GB. It's real size is close to 100.5 GB.

Haum... I have made a discovery.

Like I said, one directory is reported as 68.3 GB, while it really is closer to 100.5 GB. I have discovered that the approx. missing 30 GB reside in a "dot-directory", yeah a directory with a . (dot) in the beginning of its name. Like "/home/user/.example".

Given that my assumption is correct I now ask this: is it really the case that nautilus is supposed to skip .directories? Reaaaaally strange if you ask me!

What if you tell nautilus to display hidden files and directories ? Does it still skip then when reporting your directories' size ?

Hello.

No, I have already tried this many times (well ofcourse I'm not stupid ;-]). I have always pressed Ctrl+H so I'm able to see all directories and files. Still the same problem.

I made an extra check this time just to be sure. I was certain that Ctrl+H had been pressed (hidden files and folders were visible). Then I marked the directory (not a hidden dot-directory), hit Ctrl+Enter, and it showed as 68.3 GB. Then I opened it, and marked some key-subdirectories that I know are the bad boys, and hit Ctrl+Enter. The size of these subdirectories were reported as 100.5 GB. One of them, a dot-directory (/.example), owns the missing approx 30 GB, hence my suspicion that dot-directories are not calculated.

My question is still here to dealt with: should I report this as a bug?

Thx!

Thanks Lionel Montrieux, that solved my question.

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/post_bug.cgi

Now ain't that a pretty bug, about to get properly squashed?! Huh?

Thankyou all!

Nevermind the link I gave ya. It won't lead anywhere. The bug has been reported, anyways!

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=525136

here's a better one!