tune2fs -l stale info

[Theodore Tso]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 02:17:56PM +0200, Vincent Caron wrote:
> Hello,
> 
>   I just noticed that 'tune2fs -l' did not returned a "lively" updated
> information regarding the free inodes count (looks like it's always
> correct after unmounting). It became suprising after an online resizing
> operation, where the total inode count was immediatly updated (grown in
> my case) but the free inode count was the same: one could deduce that
> suddenly a lot of inodes were used.

Yes, this is expected.  Don't use tune2fs -l for this.  Use df -i
instead.  It is accurate while the filesystem is moutned, and it's
even portable, which is important if you ever need to use other legacy
Unix systems, such as Solaris.  :-)

You can use tune2fs -l or dumpe2fs to obtain the free block/inode
quotes for unmounted filesystems, assuming they were uncleanly
mounted.  If the system had crashed and you haven't yet run the
journal using e2fsck, the dumpe2fs/tune2fs -l may print stale
information until you run the journal by running e2fsck, or by
mounting and unmounting the ext3 filesystem.

						- Ted