1QDirStat(1) General Commands Manual QDirStat(1)
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6 QDirStat - Qt-based directory statistics
7
10 QDirStat is a graphical application to show where your disk space has
11 gone and to help you to clean it up.
12
15 qdirstat [OPTION]... [<directory-name>]
16 qdirstat --cache|-c <cache-file-name>
18 qdirstat pkg:/<pkg-spec>
20 qdirstat unpkg:/<dir>
22
25 -h|--help
26 Show a summary of command line options on stdout. That informa‐
28 tion might be more up-to-date than this man page.
29 -s|--slow-update
33 Slow down display updates during directory reading. This is use‐
35 ful when running QDirStat over a remote X11 connection.
36 The exact update interval is specified in the SlowUpdateMillisec
38 parameter in the [DirectoryTree] section of the configuration
39 file. The default is 3000 milliseconds (3 seconds).
40 -d|--dont-ask
44 Don't prompt for a directory to read upon program start even if
46 no directory was specified on the command line.
47 -c|--cache <cache-file-name>
51 Read the content of a directory tree from a cache file that was
53 generated by QDirStat's "Write to Cache File" option or by the
54 qdirstat-cache-writer script.
55 A file .qdirstat.cache.gz in the directory that it describes is
57 automatically picked up and used: A cache file /data/ar‐
58 chive/foo/.qdirstat.cache.gz with the content of /data/ar‐
59 chive/foo is used automatically when found while reading a di‐
60 rectory tree containing it.
61
64 You start the program without any parameters; then it will open a di‐
65 rectory selection box to let you choose an existing directory. Alterna‐
66 tively, you can specify the path of an existing directory as a command
67 line parameter.
68 The program will then start reading that directory tree, i.e. it will
70 recursively traverse that directory tree and read information for each
71 directory and its subdirectories.
72 The result is displayed in a tree view where you can open and close
74 branches. The tree view displays information such as the accumulated
75 size of each subtree, the number of items, the number of files, the
76 latest modification time ("mtime") in that subtree, and some more. You
77 can sort the tree by each of those columns.
78 You can select one or more items in the tree view to get more detailed
80 information or to start "cleanup actions": Move to trash, remove imme‐
81 diately (caution!), create a gzipped tarball from a directory, "make
82 clean", open a file manager window with that directory or start a shell
83 there - and more. Use the context menu (right mouse button) or the
84 "Clean Up" menu in the menu bar (you can "tear off" that menu so it re‐
85 mains open).
86 There are three predefined column layouts L1, L2, L3 where you can
88 switch what columns are displayed and whether or not to display the de‐
89 tails panel at the right.
90 Right-click on a column header to show or hide individual columns or to
92 switch between automatic column width and a user-defined width (drag
93 the column divider in the header). You can rearrange the order of col‐
94 umns with drag and drop (but the "Name" column will always remain fixed
95 at the very left side).
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100 As a secondary view, there is a "treemap" with colored rectangles
101 ("tiles"). The area of each of those tiles corresponds to its size; the
102 larger a tile, the larger the item. So you can spot a large file buried
103 deep down in the directory hierarchy easily.
104 The color of each tile corresponds to its type ("MIME category"). There
106 are a number of predefined categories such as images (photos etc.),
107 videos, music etc.; they can be configured in the configuration dialog
108 (menu "Edit" -> "Configure QDirStat").
109
113 Specifying a pkg:/ URL at the command line starts the packages view
114 that groups files by the software package they belong to.
115 The package specification in the pkg:/ URL is case insensitive.
117 Some heuristics are used to determine what mode to use: The default is
119 "starts with", but if the search pattern contains typical regexp spe‐
120 cial characters, it interprets the pattern as a regular expression.
121 If it detects just "*" (not ".*") or "?", it uses wildcard mode.
123 If the first character is "=", it uses exact matching.
125 qdirstat pkg:/chrom
128 This shows all packages starting with "chrom" or "Chrom" or
130 "CHROM".
131 qdirstat pkg:/=emacs
134 This shows only package "emacs", not "emacs25" or any other one
136 starting with "emacs".
137 qdirstat "pkg:/*gtk*"
140 This shows all packages that have "gtk" somewhere in their name.
142 Notice that you have to protect the "*" wildcards from the shell
144 by escaping them with quotes.
145 qdirstat "pkg:/.*qt[45].*"
148 This shows all Qt4 or Qt5 packages.
150 qdirstat "pkg:/(firefox|mozilla|chrome|chromium|opera)"
153 This shows all the well-known browsers on the system. Notice
155 that regular expressions use a partial match, so use the "^" and
156 "$" anchors when appropriate.
157
161 Specifying an unpkg:/ URL at the command line starts the "unpackaged
162 files" view: This reads the specified directory and ignores files that
163 are owned by an installed software package.
164 Some well-known directories that are known to contain only unpackaged
166 files are excluded by default, and some file types are ignored by de‐
167 fault:
168 /home user home directories
171 /root home directory of the root user
172 /tmp directory for temporary files
173 /var variable data for all kinds of software
174 /usr/lib/sysimage/rpm RPM database
175 /usr/local locally installed software
176 *.pyc compiled Python files
178 This list can be modified when starting the unpackaged files view from
181 the menu. Starting the view from the command line uses the same set‐
182 tings that were used last time when using the menu.
183 qdirstat unpkg:/
186 This shows the unpackaged files of the complete root filesystem.
188 qdirstat unpkg:/usr/share
191 This shows the unpackaged files of /usr/share.
193
197 ~/.config/QDirStat/QDirStat-cleanup.conf cleanup actions configuration
198 ~/.config/QDirStat/QDirStat-exclude.conf exclude rules configuration
200 ~/.config/QDirStat/QDirStat-mime.conf MIME categories configuration
201 ~/.config/QDirStat/QDirStat.conf general configuration
202 /tmp/qdirstat-$USER/qdirstat.log current / last log file
204 /tmp/qdirstat-$USER/qdirstat-*.old previous log files
205 **/.qdirstat.cache.gz auto-used cache file
207 It is safe to delete any or all of the configuration files; the next
210 program start will restore them with default settings.
211 The configuration files can safely be edited while QDirStat is not run‐
213 ning. Many parameters can be accessed via GUI, but some (the more ar‐
214 cane ones) can only be changed by editing a configuration file manu‐
215 ally.
216
219 https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat
220
223 https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat/tree/master/doc
224 and don't forget the "Help" menu!
226
230 See the issue tracker at the project repository:
231 https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat/issues
233
237 QDirStat was written by Stefan Hundhammer <Stefan.Hundhammer@gmx.de>
238 based on the original KDE 3 KDirStat (also by Stefan Hundhammer). While
239 a number of people contributed small patches and fixes, the project is
240 largely a one-man-show.
241 This manual page was written by Stefan Hundhammer
243 <Stefan.Hundhammer@gmx.de> based on the initial one written for
244 QDirStat by Patrick Matthäi <pmatthaei@debian.org>.
245 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
247 under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 any later
248 version published by the Free Software Foundation.
249 July 2019 QDirStat(1)