duh: du with a timeout

duh is a simple wrapper around du with a per-target timeout.

• bash
• timeout (part of coreutils)

Copy duh into a folder in your $PATH, e.g.:

# install -m 755 duh /usr/local/bin

# # timeout: 2 seconds
# # --exclude, -h, and -s will be passed to du

# duh --exclude=/mnt -hsT2 /* | sort -hr
49G	/var
2.7G	/root
2.1G	/swapfile
2.0G	/opt
180M	/boot
28M	/etc
5.2M	/lost+found
2.1M	/run
152K	/tmp
24K	/media
20K	/export
4.0K	/cdrom
[timeout]	/usr
[timeout]	/srv
[timeout]	/snap
[timeout]	/home
0	/vmlinuz.old
0	/vmlinuz
0	/sys
0	/sbin
...

duh [DU_OPTIONS] -T TIMEOUT [FILE]...

For each FILE, duh calls:

timeout TIMEOUT du [DU_OPTIONS] FILE

If timeout occurs (exit status 124), it prints:

[timeout]    FILE

TIMEOUT is given in seconds.

Any occurrence of -d or --max-depth causes an error.

All options (except -T/--timeout) are passed to du.

• --help: Show the help message and exit.

I'm tired of staring blankly at the screen while running du to find out which directory is gobbling up the disk space, manually hitting Ctrl-C when it outgrows my patience.

Duh.

I asked ChatGPT to see if it can make my life easier - and this is what I got.