Re: du reports different results for "."

[Richard Ems]

James Youngman wrote:
> On Feb 20, 2008 6:58 PM, Richard Ems <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Hi list!
> >
> > If I do a "du -s * ." and right afterwards "du -s ." I get different
> > values for the actual directory ".".
> >
> > This is on Linux, openSUSE 10.3, coreutils-6.9-43, xfs filesystem.
> >
> >
> > Example:
> >
> > # du -s * . | grep "\.$" ; du -s .
> > 23227004        .
> > 25251176        .
> >
> >
> > Is this correct "du" behavior ?
>
>
> It's hard to say, because you haven't given us enough information to
> form an opinion.  Hang on a minute while I log into your system and
> take a look.... see what I mean?

I thought that operating system, coreutils version and filesystem could 
be enough for a start.

> Two things that spring to mind are the possibility that the * is
> expanding into a bunch of file names, some of which may begin with "-"
> and thus modify the behaviour of du.  ("du -s ./*" is much, much,
> safer than "du -s *).

Sure, "*" IS expanding into many file names, but none of them begin with 
"-".
And, if you check the "grep" command on my example, what I was comparing 
was the different values given for ".", not for "*". Apparently I was 
not clear enough.

> Is there activity in the directories beneath "."?   That will change
> the answer du gives, of course.  Try comparing the result of
> something like "set -x; du -s . .  ; du -s . ; sleep 60; du -s .".

Of course there is no activity beneath "." !

And the difference also appears when doing a "du -sh . .", but this 
behavior seems now to be cleared, as Paul Eggert and Bob Proulx 
commented, I have many hard links under this directories, and these 
causes the difference.

Richard


--
Richard Ems       mail: address@hidden

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