QDirStat(1)

✨ QDirStat(1) — the directory statistics glow-up ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to the QDirStat manual page — it lives in the General Commands Manual section of your man command, and it's literally about finding out where all your disk space went. 💅

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🌸 NAME 🌸

QDirStat — Qt-based directory statistics. that's it, that's the name, no cap. 🎀

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

QDirStat is a graphical application that shows you where your disk space has gone and helps you clean it up. it's giving "therapist for your filesystem", fr fr. 🧹✨

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🦋 USAGE 🦋

qdirstat [OPTION]...  [<directory-name>]

qdirstat --cache|-c <cache-file-name>

qdirstat pkg:/<pkg-spec>

qdirstat unpkg:/<dir>

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👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -h|--help — shows a summary of the command line options on stdout. lowkey that info might be more up-to-date than this man page, so check it if something looks sus. 👀
• -s|--slow-update — slows down the display updates while it's reading directories. super useful when you're running QDirStat over a remote X11 connection. the exact update interval lives in the SlowUpdateMillisec parameter in the [DirectoryTree] section of the configuration file. default is 3000 milliseconds (3 seconds). 🐌
• -d|--dont-ask — don't prompt for a directory to read when the program starts, even if no directory was specified on the command line. no questions, just vibes. 🙈
• -c|--cache <cache-file-name> — reads the content of a directory tree from a cache file. that cache file has to be generated by QDirStat's "Write to Cache File" option or by the qdirstat-cache-writer script. 🗂️

a file called .qdirstat.cache.gz sitting in the directory that it describes gets automatically picked up and used: a cache file /data/archive/foo/.qdirstat.cache.gz with the content of /data/archive/foo is used automatically when it's found while reading a directory tree containing it. so iconic of it honestly. ✨

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🎀 NORMAL OPERATION 🎀

you start the program without any parameters, and it opens a directory selection box so you can pick an existing directory. or, if you're feeling decisive, you can just specify the path of an existing directory as a command line parameter. main character energy either way. 💁‍♀️

the program then starts reading that directory tree, meaning it recursively traverses that directory tree and reads information for each directory and its subdirectories. 🧚

the result shows up in a tree view where you can open and close branches. the tree view displays info like 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. sortable columns? we love to see it. 🔥

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 immediately (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 stays open). obsessed. 😭

there are three predefined column layouts L1, L2, L3, where you can switch what columns are displayed and whether or not to display the details 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 columns with drag and drop — but the "Name" column will always remain fixed at the very left side. it's the main character of columns, periodt. 👑

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🌈 THE TREEMAP 🌈

as a secondary view, there's 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. it's giving treasure map but for disk hogs. 🗺️

the color of each tile corresponds to its type ("MIME category"). there are a number of predefined categories like images (photos etc.), videos, music etc.; they can be configured in the configuration dialog (menu "Edit" -> "Configure QDirStat"). 🎨

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💜 PKG URLS / PACKAGES VIEW 💜

specifying a pkg:/ URL at the command line starts the packages view, which 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 special 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.

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🍓 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 default:

• /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 settings 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.

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🎀 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
• ~/.config/QDirStat/bookmarks.txt — bookmarks (plain text, one per line)
• /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. so if you ever fumble, it's fine bestie, it heals itself. 💖

the configuration files can safely be edited while QDirStat is not running. many parameters can be accessed via GUI, but some (the more arcane ones) can only be changed by editing a configuration file manually. 🔮

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🌟 PROJECT HOME PAGE 🌟

this section is literally empty in the original too, bestie. leaving it exactly as it is — no invented lore, iykyk. 💀

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and that's the whole page!! 💅 this was page QDirStat(1) from the General Commands Manual, and yes, the footer at the bottom of the original is just the page name and manual name again — no version number, no date, nothing extra hiding down there. so that's your cue to close the terminal tab and go clean up some disk space. slay, bye 🫶✨🌸