HPUX : HOW TO RESOLVE HIGH INODE USAGE ISSUE

What is inode ?

In computing, an inode (index node) is a data structure found in many Unix file systems. Each inode stores all the information about a file system object (file, directory, device node, socket, pipe, etc.), except data content and file name.

A file system has been reported with high inode utilization around 95%.

#-> bdf -i .

Filesystem          kbytes    used   avail %used  iused  ifree %iuse Mounted on

/dev/vg_LDS/lv_sapmnt_LDS

                   8388608 7224864 1154744   86% 703136  36352   95% /sapmnt/LDS

To reduce the inode utilization , tweak is to increase it by creating a zero byte file

#cd /sapmnt/LDS
#mkdir TEST

!!!! Run below command under  /sapmnt/LDS/TEST directory so zero byte file are created under it.!!!!

#i=1

#-> while [ $i -lt 100000000 ]

do

touch $i

i=`expr $i + 1`

done

Monitor the inode usage on second session.

Filesystem          kbytes    used   avail %used  iused  ifree %iuse Mounted on

/dev/vg_LDS/lv_sapmnt_LDS

                   8388608 7302912 1077272   87% 994077  33923   97% /sapmnt/LDS

Filesystem          kbytes    used   avail %used  iused  ifree %iuse Mounted on

/dev/vg_LDS/lv_sapmnt_LDS

                   8388608 7508984  872808   90% 1756987  27461   98% /sapmnt/LDS

After some time cancel the loop. And delete /remove the TEST directory (warning !!!!  Remove the TEST #rm -rf TEST !!!warning)

Filesystem          kbytes    used   avail %used  iused  ifree %iuse Mounted on

/dev/vg_LDS/lv_sapmnt_LDS

                   8388608 7509192  879416   90% 1275012 482684   73% /sapmnt/LDS

Now inode reduce to 73%