Mastering Duc: Visual Disk Usage Analysis for Linux Systems

What Is Duc?

Duc is an open‑source utility suite for Unix‑like operating systems that builds indexes, inspects, and visualizes disk usage. It scales to extremely large file systems, handling hundreds of millions of files and petabyte‑scale storage without issues.

Supported Interfaces

Command‑line interface

Ncurses terminal interface

X11 graphical user interface

OpenGL graphical user interface

Supported Database Back‑Ends

Tokyocabinet (default)

LevelDB

SQLite3

Installation

On Debian‑based distributions: sudo apt-get install duc From source:

wget https://github.com/zevv/duc/releases/download/1.4.4/duc-1.4.4.tar.gz

tar -xzf duc-1.4.4.tar.gz
cd duc-1.4.4
./configure
make
sudo make install

Basic Usage

1. Create a database index duc index /home This creates an index for /home and stores it in $HOME/.duc.db. Re‑run the command after adding files to update the index.

2. Query the index duc info Shows summary information such as date, time, file count, directory count, size, and path. duc ls Lists files and directories in the current working directory. duc ls /home/alvin/Downloads Lists contents of a specific directory. duc help ls Displays help for a particular subcommand.

3. Visualize disk usage

Use the ls subcommand with chart options: duc ls -Fg /home/alvin The -F flag appends file‑type indicators, and -g draws a graphical bar representing relative size. If no directory is specified, the current directory is used.

Tree view: duc ls -R /home/alvin Opens an ncurses UI: duc ui /home/alvin Opens a graphical X11 UI: duc gui /home/alvin Example chart outputs are shown in the images below:

For a complete list of commands and options, consult the manual page:

man duc