/System is hogging memory and I want to know why. Is it dangerous to use sudo du to investigate? System Information says that /System is holding 80 GB but when I search with du I only find 5 GB. I reset my spotlight memory indexing by adding then removing / form the "privacy" list in System Preferences -> Spotlight but the discrepancy persists.



I want to use this du command with sudo, but I will only do that if I am absolutely certain that it will not destroy my system. Is it dangerous to use sudo with du? How can I find what is eating my memory?

$  perl -e'%h=map{/.\s/;99**(ord$&amp;&amp;7)-$`,$_}`du -hs /System/*`;die@h{sort%h}'
du: /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.coresymbolicationd: Permission denied
du: /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.receiptInstaller: Permission denied
du: /System/Library/DirectoryServices/DefaultLocalDB/Default: Permission denied





du: /System/Library/User Template: Permission denied
5.2G    /System/Library
$
The /System folder is different to what System Information reports as System usage. There are plenty of other folders, hidden, at the root of a macOS startup disk which add up to many GBs.