Michael Mansour wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've built two new SL4.4 servers with /var an LV of 2Gb size and ext3.
>
> After running through some server testing, I found I quickly ran out of inodes
> on /var with 64% of the filesystem used but 100% of inodes used.
>
> df -i shows:
>
>                       262144  256844    5300   98% /var
>
> I've been using Linux now for 14 years and this is the first time I've ran out
> of inodes.
>
>   

Using up inodes is indicative of creating too many small/tiny files 
(logs and mail spools). Decreasing and adjusting the blocksize with 
'mke2fs' & reserved blocks with 'tune2fs' may help, but could slow 
performance if you store many large files there also (/var/cache/yum). 
ReiserFS is reportedly more efficient for lots of small files & can 
coexist with other file systems in different partitions.

I've run out of inodes when things went haywire... acquiring too much 
data, unlinked open files which are not deallocated, restoring a bad 
backup with directory link loops, or perhaps some logging in 
verbose/debug mode? IIRC, it is easy to get samba & sendmail to do that. 
There are ways to optimize a FS for Data Acquisition of small files, but 
it requires a FS planning and a new format. If it is an LVM partition, 
simply expand it by adding more space until you determine what is 
creating so many small files (lsof, find . -inum, ls -il... or perhaps 
disk quotas & 'quotacheck' can help).

"Use a 1Kb block size if you have many small files. For large 
partitions, 4Kb blocks are fine."
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/appendix.html#fragmentation
Linux Filesystems - http://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/sect_03_01.html
IOzone FS Benchmarks - http://www.iozone.org/
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/
ReiserFS - http://www.namesys.com/
Ext3 FS -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3
Inodes - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inode

- HTH Art@JAX