Why ls and du show different size?

Question

I am downloading a file with rtorrent,

When I check the folder that the file is located on, the filesize with ls command is 4.4GB but when I check the disk with du command it shows me 219MB, also the same problem with df command that seems just calculate the 219MB one.

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Here is the my console result

root@SERVER:/home/.root/TMP/tnt/d1/xxx# dir -alh

total 219M
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4.0K 2010-01-10 15:30 .
drwxr-xr-x 15 root root 4.0K 2010-01-10 15:30 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 4.4G 2010-01-11 10:55 yyy.mkv

root@SERVER:/home/.root/TMP/tnt/d1/xxx# du -h

219M    .

root@SERVER:/home/.root/TMP/tnt/d1/xxx# 

Answer 1

It's a sparse file. ls is reporting the allocated size; du is reporting the amount of space actually used.

As your torrent client downloads more it will fill in the gaps and the du-reported size will grow to match what ls reports.

To force du and df to include sparces, from the man du the second option listed is --apparent-size:

du -s -B1 --apparent-size