Subject: Re: bug#20578: du counts a multiple times bind-mounted directory just for the first listed directory in a directory lists

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 May 2015 19:35:36 -0700

Toralf Förster wrote:
> I do bind-mount a directory from the host (~35 GB of downloaded package files) onto a directory of each of the chroots to save space and bandwith.
> A "du -ms" however counts that value just for the first listed directories

It sounds like 'du' is doing the right thing.  du is supposed to count disk 
usage, which means it's not supposed to double-count files.

If you prefer each directory to be considered independently, you can use 'du a; 
du b' rather than 'du a b'.  Or possibly you may want the --count-links or 
--apparent-size options.