du: different behavior compared with gnu du

[marchaesen]

I am using the new coreutils on ubuntu 25.10.
When executing du without options, the output format is different:

❯ du /home/mahae/yocto/gatewayng/build/tmp/work/ucm_imx8m_mini-poky-linux/core-image-base/1.0/tmp-wic/boot.2
20K	/home/mahae/yocto/gatewayng/build/tmp/work/ucm_imx8m_mini-poky-linux/core-image-base/1.0/tmp-wic/boot.2/overlays
20M	/home/mahae/yocto/gatewayng/build/tmp/work/ucm_imx8m_mini-poky-linux/core-image-base/1.0/tmp-wic/boot.2

❯ gnudu /home/mahae/yocto/gatewayng/build/tmp/work/ucm_imx8m_mini-poky-linux/core-image-base/1.0/tmp-wic/boot.2
20	/home/mahae/yocto/gatewayng/build/tmp/work/ucm_imx8m_mini-poky-linux/core-image-base/1.0/tmp-wic/boot.2/overlays
19804	/home/mahae/yocto/gatewayng/build/tmp/work/ucm_imx8m_mini-poky-linux/core-image-base/1.0/tmp-wic/boot.2_

When the option -k is used, an error is printed. The gnu versions accepts this option:

❯ du -bks /home/mahae/yocto/gatewayng/build/tmp/work/ucm_imx8m_mini-poky-linux/core-image-base/1.0/tmp-wic/boot.2
error: the argument '-k' cannot be used multiple times

For more information, try '--help'.

❯ gnudu -bks /home/mahae/yocto/gatewayng/build/tmp/work/ucm_imx8m_mini-poky-linux/core-image-base/1.0/tmp-wic/boot.2
19796	/home/mahae/yocto/gatewayng/build/tmp/work/ucm_imx8m_mini-poky-linux/core-image-base/1.0/tmp-wic/boot.2

[Ada-Armstrong]

My version of GNU du when run with no args seems to default to using a block size of 1k, which is the same as coreutils.
Output of du --version:

du (GNU coreutils) 9.8
Copyright (C) 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Torbjorn Granlund, David MacKenzie, Paul Eggert,
and Jim Meyering.

I can't repro the error with the -k option on main. However, there is a slight difference in behaviour compared to GNU du when using multiple options that specify the block size. GNU du appears to use the last provided option as the block size where as coreutils picks it based on this if else chain.

[cakebaker]

I'm not able to reproduce the issue with no args on ubuntu 25.10. With podman:

$ podman container run --interactive --tty --rm ubuntu:25.10 bash
root@7cf51d1576d3:/# du bin/apt bin/top
24      bin/apt
136     bin/top
root@7cf51d1576d3:/# gnudu bin/apt bin/top
24      bin/apt
136     bin/top

On the other hand I'm able to reproduce the issue with -k on main, albeit not with your example as it is missing a second k ;-)

Here is an example to reproduce:

$ cargo run -q du -kk README.md
error: the argument '-k' cannot be used multiple times

For more information, try '--help'.

And with GNU du:

$ du -kk README.md
12      README.md

The same applies for -ss and -bb.

[marchaesen]

Could you try to run the du on a directory which is bigger in size. My directory had a size of 20 Megabyte.
Also the gnu version is not adding a K and M postfix. It is just printing the value in kBytes without postfix.
At least on my pc.

[cakebaker]

Sure. When I run it on usr/lib (with a size of about 60 MB) I get the same result:

root@7cf51d1576d3:/# du usr/lib/
// snipped a lot of directories
59628   usr/lib/
root@7cf51d1576d3:/# gnudu usr/lib/
// snipped a lot of directories
59628   usr/lib/