FreeBSD 5.4 no inodes left

[Bill Moran]

In response to "Philip Radford" <phil at chycor.com>:

> Hi All,
> 
> I am running FreeBSD 5.4 and have recently received the following message on our box for the /var partiton.
> No inodes left.
> 
> I have checked the statistics and there was an apache httpd log which was maxing out the usable space. I have since removed this file and the available space has dropped to over 50%. However I still get the 'no inodes left' message even though I have freed the space.
> 
> Does anyone know how I can get the inodes to be freed up on the /var partition.

inodes are used for file entries.  Each file/directory uses an inode.
When you run out of inodes, you can't create any more files, no matter
how much space you have left.

"df -i" will show inode usage.

The only way to free up inodes is to delete some files/directories.
You must have a lot of files or directories somewhere to be using up
all your inodes when you have 50% of the disk left.  Once you find
out where all the files are, you can delete some, or possible tar
them up so they only take up a single inode.

-- 
Bill Moran
Collaborative Fusion Inc.