Disk Usage – Using –exclude with the du Command

command linedisk-usage

This is probably something basic but I'm not able to make it work. I'm trying to use DU to get a total size of files minus certain directories. I need to exclude one specific directory called uploads but not every directory called uploads. For example, my file structure looks a bit like this:

/store
  /uploads
    /junk_to_ignore
    /more_junk_to_ignore
  /user_one
    /uploads
  /user_two

I can run the following command: 

du -ch --exclude=uploads*

and it gives me the file size minus all the "uploads" directories. However, in trying to exclude certain directories (and all its sub-directories) I fail. I've tried variations of:

du -ch --exclude=./uploads*
du -ch --exclude='/full/path/to/uploads/*'

but can't seem to figure it out. How do I exclude a specific directory?

Best Answer

You've almost found it :)

du -ch --exclude=./relative/path/to/uploads

Note no asterisk at the end. The asterisk means all subdirectories under "upload" should be omitted - but not the files directly in that directory.

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