Garl R. Grigsby wrote:
> Can anybody point me to a good source of information on un*x file
> systems.
cat `find /usr/src/linux/fs -type f` # (-:
> I am especially interested in what a inode is, what its function is,
> and how it affects me.
Short answer: every file has contents and it has some "metadata".
E.g., the content of a text file is the text. The metadata is its
owner, group, permissions, size, and some pointers to where the
content is stored on the disk. All that metadata is stored in an
on-disk structure called the i-node (short for indirect node, for
reasons that have been irrelevant for 25 years).
Some filesystem formats, Linux ext2 included, allocate a fixed number
of inodes when the filesystem is formatted. If you have average sized
files, you won't run out of inodes. If you have a bunch of tiny
files, you might run out.
You can find out how many inodes you're using like this.
jogger-egg ~# e2fsck -n /dev/hdb1
e2fsck 1.18, 11-Nov-1999 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
/dev/hdb1: clean, 28/10040 files, 4741/40131 blocks
This is my spare /boot partition, so it's very small. This filesystem
has 10040 inodes. 28 of those inodes are in use.
You might do well to move /var to a different partition, if you have
some unused space on one of your disks. Otherwise, you'll have to
backup /, reformat with more inodes (mke2fs -N ...), and restore your
files.
--
K<bob>
[EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.jogger-egg.com/
