Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1131145
Accepted
Vinoth Rc
Asked: 2019-04-05 02:17:53 +0800 CST

Is possible to increase inode in ubuntu 16.04?

  • 772

df -i shows

Filesystem       Inodes   IUsed    IFree IUse%    Mounted on
udev            1745003     593  1744410    1%    /dev
tmpfs           1760785     914  1759871    1%    /run
/dev/sda1       5283840  5283840       0    100%  /
tmpfs           1760785     225  1760560    1%    /dev/shm
tmpfs           1760785       7  1760778    1%    /run/lock
tmpfs           1760785      17  1760768    1%    /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           1760785      38  1760747    1%    /run/user/1000
server partitioning 16.04 inode

2 Answers

  1. How To Increase Amount of Disk inodes in Ubuntu Linux?

    It doesn't happen often, but at times you may run out of inodes on a Linux system.

    To find your current inode usage, run

    $ df -i

    oracle@UBUNTU-H170N-WIFI:~$ df -i
Filesystem        Inodes  IUsed     IFree IUse% Mounted on
udev             2033718    667   2033051    1% /dev
tmpfs            2039252   1311   2037941    1% /run
/dev/sda3         375360  25452    349908    7% /
/dev/sda4        1001712 181566    820146   19% /usr
tmpfs            2039252     87   2039165    1% /dev/shm
tmpfs            2039252      5   2039247    1% /run/lock
tmpfs            2039252     18   2039234    1% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda1              0      0         0     - /boot/efi
/dev/sda5        2752512  23171   2729341    1% /opt
/dev/sda6        1001712     41   1001671    1% /tmp
/dev/sda7         500960  11514    489446    3% /var
/dev/loop0         12819  12819         0  100% /snap/core/6673
/dev/sda8         670432  13657    656775    3% /home
/dev/loop2            35     35         0  100% /snap/canonical-livepatch/58
/dev/loop3         25385  25385         0  100% /snap/gtk-common-themes/1198
/dev/loop1         12816  12816         0  100% /snap/core/6350
/dev/loop7         27345  27345         0  100% /snap/gtk-common-themes/818
/dev/loop4           747    747         0  100% /snap/gnome-system-monitor/57
/dev/loop5         27631  27631         0  100% /snap/gnome-3-26-1604/82
/dev/loop6         27707  27707         0  100% /snap/gnome-3-28-1804/23
/dev/loop8          9862   9862         0  100% /snap/core18/782
/dev/sdb2      103911564   4040 103907524    1% /mnt/E030BF9830BF73DE
/dev/loop10          271    271         0  100% /snap/gnome-characters/206
/dev/loop9         27631  27631         0  100% /snap/gnome-3-26-1604/74
/dev/loop13          354    354         0  100% /snap/gnome-logs/57
/dev/loop11         1598   1598         0  100% /snap/gnome-characters/139
/dev/loop12         1269   1269         0  100% /snap/gnome-calculator/260
/dev/loop14          734    734         0  100% /snap/gnome-system-monitor/70
/dev/loop15         1720   1720         0  100% /snap/gnome-logs/45
/dev/loop16         1549   1549         0  100% /snap/gnome-calculator/352
/dev/sdb4      550191724  17424 550174300    1% /mnt/F6A4656DA46530F3
/dev/sdb3       81743792   6932  81736860    1% /mnt/7842F1D742F199D8
tmpfs            2039252     25   2039227    1% /run/user/121
tmpfs            2039252     45   2039207    1% /run/user/54321
/dev/sde1              0      0         0     - /media/oracle/SANTACRUZ
/dev/sdd1              0      0         0     - /media/oracle/TRANSCEND

    To know more about inode exactly, refer Wikipedia has a good description.

    A disk with 0 available inodes is probably full of very small files, somewhere in a specific directory (applications, tmp-files, pid files, session files, ...). Each file uses (at least) 1 inode. Many million files would use many million inodes.

    If your disk's inodes are full, how do you increase it?

    The answer is, you probably can't.

    The amount of inodes available on a system is decided upon creation of the partition. For instance, a default partition of EXT3/EXT4 has a bytes-per-inode ratio of one inode every 16384 bytes (16 Kb).

    A 10 GB partition would have around 622,592 inodes. A 100 GB partition has around 5,976,883.

    Do you want to increase the amount of inodes?

    Either increase the capacity of the disk entirely or re-format the disk using the following command:

    $ sudo mkfs.ext4 -i <bytes-per-inode>           # to manually overwrite the bytes-per-inode ratio.

    What is bytes-per-inode?

    Specify the bytes/inode ratio. 'mkfs.ext4' creates an inode for every bytes-per-inode bytes of space on the disk. The larger the bytes-per-inode ratio, the fewer inodes will be created. This value generally shouldn't be smaller than the blocksize of the filesystem, since in that case more inodes would be made than can ever be used. Be warned that it is not possible to change this ratio on a filesystem after it is created, so be careful deciding the correct value for this parameter. Note that resizing a filesystem changes the number of inodes to maintain this ratio.

    To know more about the command mkfs.ext4, go for man page with the command:

    $ man mkfs.ext4

    Also refer mke2fs - create an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem

    • 5
  2. Best Answer

    I am not sure that you can modify the number of inodes in an existing ext4 file system. There are some options in tune2fs, but there are warnings about it in the manual.

    But it is possible (and straight-forward) to increase the number of inodes, when you create the file system. See man mkfs.ext4,

       -N number-of-inodes
          Overrides the default calculation  of  the  number  of  inodes  that
          should  be reserved for the filesystem (which is based on the number
          of blocks and the bytes-per-inode ratio).  This allows the  user  to
          specify the number of desired inodes directly.
    • 2