/var full

[Steve Bertrand]

Paul Schmehl wrote:
> --On June 18, 2008 11:59:49 PM -0400 Sahil Tandon <sahil at tandon.net> wrote:

>> Also, what is the output of 'df -i /var'?
>>
> 
> # df -i /var/
> Filesystem  1K-blocks    Used     Avail Capacity iused    ifree %iused 
> Mounted on
> /dev/da1s1d 283737842 5397568 255641248     2%   20350 36673664    0% /var
> 
>> See recent thread on FreeBSD Forums for context:
>>
>>     http://www.freebsdforums.org/forums/printthread.php?t=58071
> 
> Thanks.  At least I know I'm not the only one to have run into this oddity.
> 
> I'm not that knowledgeable of inodes.  My understanding is they are 
> destroyed once a file is no longer in use.  Is that correct?  Is there 
> any sort of history kept of file system activity that would identify 
> what filename was identified by the inumbers listed in dmesg.today?  Or 
> is that vain hope?
> 
> This is a 6.2 RELEASE system.  (Looks like it's time to upgrade to 7.0 
> STABLE.)

I am not in any which way certain changing major revision numbers will 
affect the file system in any which way. I am also not very 
knowledgeable in regards to inodes, but I do know that they can run out 
before disk space does.

 From what I understand, 1MB of filespace will take up X inodes. If 1MB 
of file size is fragmented, it could take up X multiplied by N number of 
inodes, that could include a large portion of wasted whitespace.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Off the top of my head, with no testing or researching behind me, what 
happens if:

- stop mysqld
- note perms of filesystem
- cp -R /var/db /another/location/with/space
- rm -r /var/db/*
- fsck /dev/location-of-var
- cp -R /copy/of/db/dir /var/db
- reset perms
- start mysqld

... does that free up some inodes?

Steve