In this tutorial, we will show you how to install NCDU on Ubuntu 17.04. For those of you who didn’t know, For those of you who didn’t know, Ncdu (NCurses Disk Usage) is a command-line tool to view and analyze disk space usage on Linux. It can drill down into directories and report space used by individual directories. This way it is very easy to track down space-consuming files/directories. This article walks you through the process of installing and using NCDU on a Linux server.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of NCDU on a Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 17.04, and any other Debian-based distribution.
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install NCDU on Ubuntu 17.04
Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
Step 2. Installing NCDU.
First, add the PPA (personal package archive) repo by executing the following command:
add-apt-repository ppa:eugenesan/ppa
Install NCDU itself with this command:
apt-get update apt-get install ncdu
Step 3. Ncdu sample usage
To start ncdu type the following command on your terminal:
ncdu
To get more information on the selected directory press “i” button:
To see help window with ncdu available options press “Shift+?” key combination. You can use arrow keys to move up and down for more options.
For command-line options and other information, go through the man page of ncdu command.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Ncdu. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing NCurses Disk Usage in Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official NCDU website.
