Re: [PLUG] Reclaiming inodes

[Walt Mankowski <waltman@pobox.com>]

Right. In case it wasn't already clear from this thread, an inode is
the internal representation of a file on a disk. It's a bit more
complicated than that; due to hard links, a single inode can have more
than 1 filename associated with it. But essentially that error means
you can't add any more files to the drive.

735K does seem like an awful lot of files for a 12G partition. I've
been assuming they're all necessary for whatever you're using it
for. If not, as Joe says you can also alleviate this problem by
deleting a bunch of files.

Walt

On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 03:34:08PM +0000, Joe Rosato wrote:
> Usually means you have a ton of tiny files somewhere. Last time I saw that
> was helping someone who never deleted past kernel builds... If the system
> is in a working state track down the directory that contains the most
> inodes, in this past case it was src.
> 
> I doubt you actually have this problem, it is possible, but my guess is
> there are a lot of tiny files somewhere... Maybe spool because mail issue??
> Find the directory and you will find your problem.
> 
> To give yourself some quick breathing room - run bleachbit to reclaim
> something and if the system is too full then do all this on a bootable USB.
> Good luck!
> 
> Joe
> 
> On Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 10:51 AM brent timothy saner <brent.saner@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > On 09/28/2017 10:45 AM, K.S. Bhaskar wrote:
> > > Might fstransform to transform the filesystem in place to something else
> > > (xfs seems to never run out of inodes) be an option?
> > >
> > > Regards
> > > -- Bhaskar
> > >
> >
> > well, sure, but you should be making a full backup at that point
> > anyways. ;) fstransform, while awesome, is still doing some pretty crazy
> > stuff and if this is irreplaceable data, well... i personally wouldn't
> > risk it without making a backup.
> >
> > plus there's this:
> >
> > """
> > the device must have a little free space, typically at least 5%
> >
> > WARNING: transforming an almost full device to 'xfs' file-system can be
> > tricky:
> >
> >     you need either slightly more free space, typically at least 10%,
> >     or you must be VERY quick at suspending fstransform when either the
> > source or the target (or both) file-system is almost full and run
> > 'xfs_fsr' on the source or target device (or both) before resuming
> > fstransform. A future fstransform version may automate this operation.
> > """
> >
> > and this:
> >
> > """
> > If the device contains a HUGE number of files with multiple hard links,
> > fstransform will be very slow and consume a LOT of memory. Devices with
> > more than one million files with multiple hard links can cause
> > fstransform to crash with "out of memory" errors.
> > """
> >
> > i'd say overall, it's faster and safer to just reformat the filesystem
> > after copying the files to a safe place, and then copying them back when
> > the mkfs is done.
> >
> > (though you ARE on to something with XFS; it doesn't really have the
> > same sort of "oops, i hit the inode limit" issues you run into with
> > extents filesystems. i wouldn't want to run / on it, though.)
> >
> > ___________________________________________________________________________
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> -- 
> Joe

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