Web Server Rescue

Inspect Release Disk Usage

A host is low on disk and release directories may be taking too much space.

Command

du -sh releases/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail -10

What changed

Nothing changes. Disk usage is calculated and printed.

Danger

safe

When to use it

Use when deploys fail due to disk space or cleanup policies need review.

When not to use it

Do not run recursive disk scans on extremely busy hosts if the extra I/O is unacceptable.

Undo or recovery

No undo needed because this command is read-only.

Expected output

The largest release directories, sorted by human-readable size.

demo script

Disposable terminal steps

find releases -maxdepth 2 -type f -print
du -sh releases/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail -10

Terminal transcript Demo JSON

simulated output

What it looks like

disposable vessel

::fixture-ready::
$ find releases -maxdepth 2 -type f -print
releases/2026-06-25-1215/app.tar.gz
releases/2026-06-25-1215/app.txt
releases/2026-06-25-1200/app.txt
::exit-code::0
$ du -sh releases/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail -10
0	releases/current
8.0K	releases/2026-06-25-1200
12K	releases/2026-06-25-1215
::exit-code::0

YouTube Short

Find heavy releases.

When deploys hit disk pressure, check release directory sizes before deleting anything.

experiments

A/B tests to run

Metric: comment_rate

A: Find heavy releases.

B: Measure before cleanup.