Synopsis

Excavate is a very simple command line utility used to understand how disk usage in a particular part of the file system has changed over time. It lists out the all of the files contained in a particular directory and its subdirectories while sorting them according to when they last changed, from youngest to oldest. When listing the files it also gives their size and the accumulated disk space need to hold the file and all younger files. Files in the top three deciles in size are colored red, pink, and yellow respectively.

Usage: excavate [options] [<path>…]

Options:

-d, –date give modification date rather than description of age

-s, –size sort by size rather than by age

-w, –warn warn of inaccessible files

Normally the output would be piped into more (or less). For example:

> excavate /etc | less
MODIFIED             SIZE     ACCUM    FILE
just now             0 B      0 B      /etc/mtab
6 hours ago          76.3 kB  76.3 kB  /etc/ld.so.cache
6 hours ago          106 B    76.4 kB  /etc/selinux/targeted/seusers
6 hours ago          3.7 MB   3.78 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/policy/policy.30
6 hours ago          13.2 kB  3.79 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.homedirs
6 hours ago          44.7 kB  3.84 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.homedirs.bin
6 hours ago          1.39 MB  5.23 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.bin
6 hours ago          379 kB   5.61 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts
2 days ago           9 B      5.61 MB  /etc/tuned/active_profile
2 days ago           656 B    5.61 MB  /etc/vmware/config
3 days ago           15.3 kB  5.63 MB  /etc/cron.daily/google-chrome-beta
3 days ago           2.25 kB  5.63 MB  /etc/alternatives/google-chrome
3 days ago           33 B     5.63 MB  /etc/vmware/usbarb.rules
4 days ago           2.82 kB  5.63 MB  /etc/localtime
4 days ago           129 B    5.63 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/.policy.sha512
4 days ago           607 B    5.63 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/setrans.conf
4 days ago           2.62 kB  5.64 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/booleans.subs_dist
4 days ago           74 B     5.64 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/securetty_types
4 days ago           245 B    5.64 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/customizable_types
4 days ago           422 B    5.64 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.subs_dist
4 days ago           0 B      5.64 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.subs
4 days ago           0 B      5.64 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/semanage.trans.LOCK
4 days ago           0 B      5.64 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/semanage.read.LOCK
4 days ago           30 B     5.64 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/initrc_context
4 days ago           254 B    5.64 MB  /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/default_contexts
...