Increasing inodes without recreating file system

[Robin Laing]

Robin Bowes wrote:
> nodata wrote:
> 
>>
>> I don't think you can do it online.
> 
> 
> That was my understanding too - I thought I'd ask here as a last resort :(
> 
>> In the meanwhile, you should find the user with lots of small files to
>> buy you some time.
> 
> 
> Erm, that will be me! I'm the only user of the box.
> 
> I originally envisaged the large partition would be for my music library 
> (mainly flac), i.e. the files would be big but not all the numerous, so 
> I changed the default inode allocation when I created the file system. 
> Bad move!
> 
> I'm now using /home for other things, e.g. /home/apache has all my 
> websites, /home/vpopmail has all my mail, and I've used up all my inodes.
> 
> I guess I can do some shuffling around to keep things running, e.g. move 
> stuff to /usr (where there is 6.8GB free and loads of inodes).
> 
>> Something like:
>> cd /home && for i in *; do echo -n "$i: "; find $i -type f | wc -l;
>> done
>> will probably do it.
> 
> 
> I ran your script with the following results:
> 
> apache: 92685
> builder: 3
> dan: 1696
> du-2004-08-25-17:42:28: 1
> eztest: 67
> jane: 4
> mysql: 2795
> notes: 1692
> postgres: 1567
> robin: 292498
> slimserver: 27799
> smtpd: 5402
> sockd: 4
> svn: 38
> test: 164776
> testlist: 46
> tom: 726
> valiant: 6
> vpopmail: 275006
> 
> As you can see, I am the main culprit, with vpopmail a close second.
> 
> I'm sure I can sort that out to keep me rolling for a while longer.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> R.
> 

 From man mkfs.ext3
  -i bytes-per-inode
               Specify the bytes/inode ratio.   mke2fs  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 then too many inodes  will  be 
made.   Be warned  that is not possible to expand the number of inodes 
on a filesystem after it is created, so be careful deciding the 
correct value for this parameter.


As I am planning on doing the same thing in the very near future with 
a RAID array, this is of interest to me.  I will have many files that 
are in the 10k to 200K range, graphics and ogg/mp3's/flac files.

Does the default number of inodes work with this or should I run 
mkfs.ext3 with the -i option and specify a small number?

Or be save and use the -T  news option and be safe?

Is there a maximum number of inodes allowed per filesystem?

-- 
Robin Laing