Multiple dirs in --ignore-dirs not working as expected

[edrozenberg]

I'm comparing gdu results (correct) with dua results (incorrect) when excluding multiple dirs on MacOS. I'm excluding these specific dirs in order to avoid the double-counting caused by how Apple has decided to mount, alias, and symlink various items in /System.

My Mac drive is a 1 TB with ~ 330 GB free atm, so gdu is correct showing ~600 GB used, while dua shows ~1.2TB used due to the double counting.

My GDU command:
sudo gdu-go -i /System/Volumes/Data/Volumes,/System/Volumes/Data /

My DUA command:
sudo dua -i /System/Volumes/Data/Volumes,/System/Volumes/Data interactive /

And reported disk use from df:

Filesystem                       Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk1s1s1                  932Gi   21Gi  332Gi     6%    /
devfs                           194Ki  194Ki    0Bi   100%    /dev
/dev/disk1s4                    932Gi  1.0Gi  332Gi     1%    /System/Volumes/VM
/dev/disk1s2                    932Gi  2.1Gi  332Gi     1%    /System/Volumes/Preboot
/dev/disk1s6                    932Gi   70Mi  332Gi     1%    /System/Volumes/Update
/dev/disk1s5                    932Gi  574Gi  332Gi    64%    /System/Volumes/Data
map auto_home                     0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /System/Volumes/Data/home
/dev/disk1s1                    932Gi   21Gi  332Gi     6%    /System/Volumes/Update/mnt1
/dev/disk3s1                    3.8Gi  3.6Gi  220Mi    95%    /Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Volumes/watchOS_20S75

[Byron]

Thanks a lot for letting me know!

Indeed, it doesn't seem to work at all and I could reproduce it well. If it's that broken, and was at some point deemed working, maybe a test is missing for it as well.

[edrozenberg]

I've never tried ignore before with dua so do not know if it ever worked :). Thanks for looking into it!

[gosuwachu]

@edrozenberg This looks to work as expected. To pass multiple ignore directories you have to specify them separately, like this:

dua -i /System/Volumes/Data/Volumes -i /System/Volumes/Data interactive /

[edrozenberg]

@edrozenberg This looks to work as expected. To pass multiple ignore directories you have to specify them separately, like this:

dua -i /System/Volumes/Data/Volumes -i /System/Volumes/Data interactive /

Thanks but this does not work as expected, still getting an incorrect double-counted result:

sudo dua -i /System/Volumes/Data/Volumes -i /System/Volumes/Data interactive /

[gosuwachu]

I think I know where this bug is coming from. Try this instead:

sudo dua -i System/Volumes/Data/Volumes -i System/Volumes/Data interactive /

dua doesn't include the starting / in the path which was causing your ignored directories not to match. However on my mac dua still shows incorrect results - but probably for a different reason.

[edrozenberg]

I think I know where this bug is coming from. Try this instead:

sudo dua -i System/Volumes/Data/Volumes -i System/Volumes/Data interactive /

dua doesn't include the starting / in the path which was causing your ignored directories not to match. However on my mac dua still shows incorrect results - but probably for a different reason.

Thanks this seems to work fine, but it shouldn't because if I don't include the / for each path it should not find them if my current directory is not in the root of the drive. But it does find them somehow. [edit] I see it finds them based on the starting directory given, /.

[~]$ sudo dua -i System/Volumes/Data/Volumes -i System/Volumes/Data interactive /

[Byron]

Thanks everyone for chiming in and for helping to solve this puzzle!

I can confirm that sudo dua -i System/Volumes/Data/Volumes -i System/Volumes/Data interactive / works for me.

I think in order to resolve this, dua should properly transform the paths to the format that it needs to make them work for it. That way, -i target/ , -i $PWD/target or -i target/ will all work the same.

[Byron]

This should be fixed with the latest release, and I wasn't able to reproduce the issue anymore with the new version either.

Please let us know if the issue persists.