QDirStat(1) General Commands Manual QDirStat(1)
NAME
QDirStat - Qt-based directory statistics
DESCRIPTION
QDirStat is a graphical application to show where your disk space has
gone and to help you to clean it up.
USAGE
qdirstat [OPTION]... [<directory-name>]
qdirstat --cache|-c <cache-file-name>
qdirstat pkg:/<pkg-spec>
qdirstat unpkg:/<dir>
OPTIONS
-h|--help
Show a summary of command line options on stdout. That informa-
tion might be more up-to-date than this man page.
-s|--slow-update
Slow down display updates during directory reading. This is use-
ful when running QDirStat over a remote X11 connection.
The exact update interval is specified in the SlowUpdateMillisec
parameter in the [DirectoryTree] section of the configuration
file. The default is 3000 milliseconds (3 seconds).
-d|--dont-ask
Don't prompt for a directory to read upon program start even if
no directory was specified on the command line.
-c|--cache <cache-file-name>
Read the content of a directory tree from a cache file that was
generated by QDirStat's "Write to Cache File" option or by the
qdirstat-cache-writer script.
A file .qdirstat.cache.gz in the directory that it describes is
automatically picked up and used: A cache file /data/ar-
chive/foo/.qdirstat.cache.gz with the content of /data/ar-
chive/foo is used automatically when found while reading a di-
rectory tree containing it.
NORMAL OPERATION
You start the program without any parameters; then it will open a di-
rectory selection box to let you choose an existing directory. Alterna-
tively, you can specify the path of an existing directory as a command
line parameter.
The program will then start reading that directory tree, i.e. it will
recursively traverse that directory tree and read information for each
directory and its subdirectories.
The result is displayed in a tree view where you can open and close
branches. The tree view displays information such as the accumulated
size of each subtree, the number of items, the number of files, the
latest modification time ("mtime") in that subtree, and some more. You
can sort the tree by each of those columns.
You can select one or more items in the tree view to get more detailed
information or to start "cleanup actions": Move to trash, remove imme-
diately (caution!), create a gzipped tarball from a directory, "make
clean", open a file manager window with that directory or start a shell
there - and more. Use the context menu (right mouse button) or the
"Clean Up" menu in the menu bar (you can "tear off" that menu so it re-
mains open).
There are three predefined column layouts L1, L2, L3 where you can
switch what columns are displayed and whether or not to display the de-
tails panel at the right.
Right-click on a column header to show or hide individual columns or to
switch between automatic column width and a user-defined width (drag
the column divider in the header). You can rearrange the order of col-
umns with drag and drop (but the "Name" column will always remain fixed
at the very left side).
THE TREEMAP
As a secondary view, there is a "treemap" with colored rectangles
("tiles"). The area of each of those tiles corresponds to its size; the
larger a tile, the larger the item. So you can spot a large file buried
deep down in the directory hierarchy easily.
The color of each tile corresponds to its type ("MIME category"). There
are a number of predefined categories such as images (photos etc.),
videos, music etc.; they can be configured in the configuration dialog
(menu "Edit" -> "Configure QDirStat").
PKG URLS / PACKAGES VIEW
Specifying a pkg:/ URL at the command line starts the packages view
that groups files by the software package they belong to.
The package specification in the pkg:/ URL is case insensitive.
Some heuristics are used to determine what mode to use: The default is
"starts with", but if the search pattern contains typical regexp spe-
cial characters, it interprets the pattern as a regular expression.
If it detects just "*" (not ".*") or "?", it uses wildcard mode.
If the first character is "=", it uses exact matching.
qdirstat pkg:/chrom
This shows all packages starting with "chrom" or "Chrom" or
"CHROM".
qdirstat pkg:/=emacs
This shows only package "emacs", not "emacs25" or any other one
starting with "emacs".
qdirstat "pkg:/*gtk*"
This shows all packages that have "gtk" somewhere in their name.
Notice that you have to protect the "*" wildcards from the shell
by escaping them with quotes.
qdirstat "pkg:/.*qt[45].*"
This shows all Qt4 or Qt5 packages.
qdirstat "pkg:/(firefox|mozilla|chrome|chromium|opera)"
This shows all the well-known browsers on the system. Notice
that regular expressions use a partial match, so use the "^" and
"$" anchors when appropriate.
UNPKG URLS / UNPACKAGED FILES VIEW
Specifying an unpkg:/ URL at the command line starts the "unpackaged
files" view: This reads the specified directory and ignores files that
are owned by an installed software package.
Some well-known directories that are known to contain only unpackaged
files are excluded by default, and some file types are ignored by de-
fault:
/home user home directories
/root home directory of the root user
/tmp directory for temporary files
/var variable data for all kinds of software
/usr/lib/sysimage/rpm RPM database
/usr/local locally installed software
*.pyc compiled Python files
This list can be modified when starting the unpackaged files view from
the menu. Starting the view from the command line uses the same set-
tings that were used last time when using the menu.
qdirstat unpkg:/
This shows the unpackaged files of the complete root filesystem.
qdirstat unpkg:/usr/share
This shows the unpackaged files of /usr/share.
FILES
~/.config/QDirStat/QDirStat-cleanup.conf cleanup actions configuration
~/.config/QDirStat/QDirStat-exclude.conf exclude rules configuration
~/.config/QDirStat/QDirStat-mime.conf MIME categories configuration
~/.config/QDirStat/QDirStat.conf general configuration
/tmp/qdirstat-$USER/qdirstat.log current / last log file
/tmp/qdirstat-$USER/qdirstat-*.old previous log files
**/.qdirstat.cache.gz auto-used cache file
It is safe to delete any or all of the configuration files; the next
program start will restore them with default settings.
The configuration files can safely be edited while QDirStat is not run-
ning. Many parameters can be accessed via GUI, but some (the more ar-
cane ones) can only be changed by editing a configuration file manu-
ally.
PROJECT HOME PAGE
https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat
SEE ALSO
https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat/tree/master/doc
and don't forget the "Help" menu!
BUGS
See the issue tracker at the project repository:
https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat/issues
AUTHORS
QDirStat was written by Stefan Hundhammer <Stefan.Hundhammer@gmx.de>
based on the original KDE 3 KDirStat (also by Stefan Hundhammer). While
a number of people contributed small patches and fixes, the project is
largely a one-man-show.
This manual page was written by Stefan Hundhammer
<Stefan.Hundhammer@gmx.de> based on the initial one written for
QDirStat by Patrick Matthäi <pmatthaei@debian.org>.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 any later
version published by the Free Software Foundation.
July 2019 QDirStat(1)
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