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Re: [LUG] inodes

 

Anton Channing wrote:
> My webhost is complaining that I have
> exceeded my inode limit.  I never even
> realised there was such a limit, and
> certainly didn't know what an inode was.

I think you need to be clear exactly which inode limit.

Older Unix and Linux file systems had a per file system limit, but many
file systems now have as many inodes as needed (e.g. reiserfs).

> I can't seem to find a command that
> will tell me how many inodes are
> located in each directory (including
> those recursively in that directories
> sub-directories).

If it is lack of inodes in a filesystem (rather than a kernel limit):

df -i

Will show which file system.

Last time it happened to me, which was an old version of HP-UX, I just
used "find" to discover where a huge number of files exist.

If you really need to count inodes, "ls -Ri" and judicious use of sort
and uniq and wc would give an answer. But I suspect just find, and
you'll see the millions of files (or directories) you didn't know about
somewhere.

Usually the cause is something insane in /tmp or /var/tmp, or similar.

Some database locking schemes in Unix use to use an inode table entry
per lock, which in Unix kernels that had a fixed sized inode table,
meant you could run out of space in the kernels inode table with just
one big and busy database file. Hence the query about which inode limit.
Although I think the Linux kernels inode table is just a list, so it
just runs out of memory when such databases go mad.

I haven't see an out of inode error in ages, but then when given a
choice I pick reiserfs over ext3. But any modern file system (i.e. not
ext3) should be fine. I know dishing ext3 is unpopular, but hey I never
meant to be popular, I just mean to keep my systems working.

I don't suppose the host is imposing this limit deliberately. And unless
they did odd things when creating the file systems, there is probably
something very silly going on, like a script creating very small files
and directories very quickly.

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