How to Manage your Hard Drive Space in cPanel using command line
If you own a VPS account with root access and you choose to manage it yourself, you must learn or have some understanding of how to use command line.
In this tutorial, we provide simple common steps you can follow to manage your server's hard drive space the right way.
We will be using the df and du commands to generate reports of your disk space usage from within the bash shell used on Linux, macOS, and many other Unix-like operating systems. These commands let you easily identify what’s using up your system’s storage.
Viewing the Total, Available and Used Disk Space.
To find out the available and used disk space, use df (disk filesystems, sometimes called disk free). You may use PuTTy if you have it installed in your machine or you can simply login into your cPanel or WHM and search for "terminal" from the top left conner and click on it. You will see an interface from where you can use to type the suggested command lines.
So typing df you will get the following result:
[root@devjungle ~]# df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on devtmpfs 930732 0 930732 0% /dev tmpfs 941092 0 941092 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 941092 99844 841248 11% /run tmpfs 941092 0 941092 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/vda1 40184928 20517044 17606904 54% / /dev/loop0 1008352 1472 953992 1% /tmp tmpfs 188220 0 188220 0% /run/user/0
Examine disk space usage
To examine your system's disk space usage, run the command df -h and you will get the following result:
[root@devjungle ~]# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on devtmpfs 909M 0 909M 0% /dev tmpfs 920M 0 920M 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 920M 98M 822M 11% /run tmpfs 920M 0 920M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/vda1 39G 20G 17G 54% / /dev/loop0 985M 1.5M 932M 1% /tmp tmpfs 184M 0 184M 0% /run/user/0
To get the results with totals
[root@devjungle ~]# df -h --total Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on devtmpfs 909M 0 909M 0% /dev tmpfs 920M 0 920M 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 920M 98M 822M 11% /run tmpfs 920M 0 920M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/vda1 39G 20G 17G 54% / /dev/loop0 985M 1.5M 932M 1% /tmp tmpfs 184M 0 184M 0% /run/user/0 total 44G 20G 22G 48% -
The above output indicates that the system's main storage device (/dev/vda1) in the root (/) directory uses 54% of its available disk space and contains 17 GB of free space.
Examine which directory is consuming most space
To determine which files and directories consume most of your hard drive space, run the du (disk usage) command. The output will resemble the following example:
[root@devjungle ~]# du 636 ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/performance_schema 2508 ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db 680 ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/sys 45912 ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name1 19104 ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/mysql 8 ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name2 10556 ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name3 83072 ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name4 76012 ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/bd-name5 427008 ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020 427116 ./tmp 10548 ./.spamassassin/sa-compile.cache 10552 ./.spamassassin 4 ./.ssh 12 ./.HttpRequest 4 ./dbs
To get the result in Mega Bites run du -BM command
[root@devjungle ~]# du -BM 1M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/performance_schema 3M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db 1M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/sys 45M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name1 19M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/mysql 1M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name2 11M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name3 82M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name4 75M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/bd-name5 417M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020 418M ./tmp 11M ./.spamassassin/sa-compile.cache 11M ./.spamassassin 1M ./.ssh 1M ./.HttpRequest 1M ./dbsNotes:
- According to cPanel people, they recommend that you only run this command in off-peak hours to prevent additional load on your server.
- The numbers in the left column represent the sizes of the files and directories that the working directory contains, in human-readable format.
In the above example, the /tmp directory, which mostly contains the system's cPanel account backup data, uses the most disk space (418 MB).
Examine the desired directory
To examine the desired directory, rundu -sh /tmp/* command.
[root@devjungle ~]# du -sh /tmp/* 12K /tmp/17521._USR_LOCAL_CPANEL_SCRIPTS_UPDATENOW__.d1fdee7a.tmp 4.0K /tmp/17521._USR_LOCAL_CPANEL_SCRIPTS_UPDATENOW__.e5abe144.tmp 12K /tmp/22032._USR_LOCAL_CPANEL_SCRIPTS_UPDATENOW__.43f92c6b.tmp 4.0K /tmp/22032._USR_LOCAL_CPANEL_SCRIPTS_UPDATENOW__.4981efd5.tmp 12K /tmp/25371._USR_LOCAL_CPANEL_SCRIPTS_UPDATENOW__.97fcc106.tmp 4.0K /tmp/25371._USR_LOCAL_CPANEL_SCRIPTS_UPDATENOW__.f509d822.tmp 16K /tmp/lost+found 0 /tmp/mysql.sock 4.0K /tmp/yum_save_tx.2020-09-28.05-07.eB_e_K.yumtx 4.0K /tmp/yum_save_tx.2020-09-29.05-08.VnvEBg.yumtx 4.0K /tmp/yum_save_tx.2020-09-30.07-29.xljaKc.yumtx 4.0K /tmp/yum_save_tx.2020-10-01.07-42.sxcQPO.yumtx 4.0K /tmp/yum_save_tx.2020-10-02.06-00.BqbADW.yumtx 4.0K /tmp/yum_save_tx.2020-10-03.08-48.ASszXC.yumtx 4.0K /tmp/yum_save_tx.2020-10-04.07-05.634vWu.yumtx 4.0K /tmp/yum_save_tx.2020-10-05.07-04.f76L5G.yumtx 4.0K /tmp/yum_save_tx.2020-10-06.08-34.UOJ7fC.yumtx 4.0K /tmp/yum_save_tx.2020-10-07.09-09.cHgHJ9.yumtxRun
df -h --total /dev /run command and obtain a report with totals:
[root@devjungle ~]# df -h --total /dev /run Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on devtmpfs 909M 0 909M 0% /dev tmpfs 920M 98M 822M 11% /run total 1.8G 98M 1.7G 6% -
Just like df, du command has a human-readable option, -h, which uses a range of block sizes according to the size of each directory. And if you were to run du -h or du -h --totalcommand, you would get the following results:
[root@devjungle ~]# du -h 1M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/performance_schema 3M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db 1M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/sys 45M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name1 19M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/mysql 1M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name2 11M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name3 82M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name4 75M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/bd-name5 417M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020 11M ./.spamassassin/sa-compile.cache 11M ./.spamassassin 4.0K ./.ssh 12K ./.HttpRequest 4.0K ./dbs
Resulting report with total:
[root@devjungle ~]# du -h --total 1M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/performance_schema 3M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db 1M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/sys 45M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name1 19M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/mysql 1M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name2 11M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name3 82M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/db-name4 75M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020/bd-name5 417M ./tmp/mysql_backup_28_08_2020 418M ./tmp 11M ./.spamassassin/sa-compile.cache 11M ./.spamassassin 4.0K ./.ssh 12K ./.HttpRequest 4.0K ./dbs 512M . 512M total
Adding -s * to du -h for summarization
The -s * (summarize) option gives a total for each directory without displaying the sub-directories within each directory. The following command du -h -s * asks du to return information in summary format, in human readable numbers, for all directories (*) below the current working directory.
[root@devjungle ~]# du -h -s * 12K cpanel3-skel 4.0K dbs 8.0K install.sh 32K latest 4.0K legacy_ea3_distiller_files-1574305518.tar.gz 376K litecube-f 0 log-update.log 0 munin-update.log 28K perl5 32M roundcubemail-plugins-kolab 6.2M roundcube_plus_skin_litecube-f.tar.gz 29M skin_tmp 418M tmp
Deleting unwanted files
To delete unwanted files, run rm -f filename command, where filename represents the file to remove:
Delete cPanel File Manager temp files
File Manager always creates a temp file that may or may not get removed based on upload. You can remove all temp files by using the rm -fv /home/*/tmp/Cpanel_* command.
Warning:
Exercise caution when you run the rm utility. You will not be able to recover files or directories that you delete.
Clean up Yum files
Every time you update yum it leaves package cache files on the server. You can clean up all unneeded yum files by running
yum clean all commands.
Retaining log entries
Log files often use a large amount of disk space. To retain the system’s most recent log file entries when you remove excess log files, perform the following steps:
-
If you have not already located the specific files to remove from this directory, run the
ducommand. - Examine the command’s output to determine the files to delete.
- For each file, run the following commands, where filename represents the file’s name.
- To release the file lock, restart the service that created the file.
tail -5000 filename > filename.new
mv filename.new filename
sync
Warning
If you have a selfmanaged VPS and you are not comfortable using command line to manage your cPanel / WHM server, do not use it! Please ask for help from your hosting provider or hire a developer to assist you in doing so.