how inode works Post: 302277245

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Operating Systems Solaris how inode works Post 302277245 by bakunin on Thursday 15th of January 2009 06:57:24 PM

01-15-2009

Registered User

Jim is absolutely correct, just to explain where all these "rules of thumb" come from:

For every file you need exactly one inode, which contains the information the filesystem has about the file. In this data structure, for instance, the information which "ls" displays is stored. It doesn't matter how big or small the file is, even if it contains nothing at all it still needs an i-node. Links, btw., are just inodes, which point to another inode. So links also need one inode.

That means: the number of inodes you need depends on the size of the disk and your estimation about how big the average file (in fs blocks) in it is going to be. Jim has already mentioned databases, because they have usually a few very big files. A multi-terabyte Oracle database might consist of, say, a hundred files, thats all. On the other side of the spectrum are log directories of tools which produce many very small logfiles. Most filesystems are somewhere in between these extremes.

Run a "find" command over the various filesystems on some machines and calculate the average file size and the number of the files to get some empirical data to build on your experience.

If in doubt between two variants, opt for the bigger number of inodes. The space wasted this way is not that much and certainly not as big as the space wasted if the filesystem runs out of inodes.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

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LEARN ABOUT OPENSOLARIS

space

space(4)							   File Formats 							  space(4)

NAME

       space - disk space requirement file

DESCRIPTION

       space is an ASCII file that gives information about disk space requirements for the target environment. The space file defines space needed
       beyond what is used by objects defined in the prototype(4) file; for example, files which will be installed with the installf(1M)  command.
       The space file should define the maximum amount of additional space that a package will require.

       The generic format of a line in this file is:

       pathname  blocks  inodes

       Definitions for the fields are as follows:

       pathname    Specify a directory name which may or may not be the mount  point for a filesystem. Names that do not begin with a slash  ('/')
		   indicate relocatable directories.

       blocks	   Define the number of disk blocks required for installation of the files and directory entries contained in the pathname  (using
		   a 512-byte block size).

       inodes	   Define the number of inodes required for installation of the files and directory entries contained in the pathname.

EXAMPLES

       Example 1 A sample file.

	 # extra space required by config data which is
	 # dynamically loaded onto the system
	 data 500  1

SEE ALSO

       installf(1M), prototype(4)

       Application Packaging Developer's Guide

SunOS 5.11							    7 Feb 1997								  space(4)

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