Why is total inodes count of XFS filesystem not constant ?
Issue
- XFS supports dynamic inode allocation. i.e. the inodes are allocated as needed as per the files created.
- Sudden exhaustion of inodes on XFS files system.
- The inode max count changes on iterative df -i of file system.
-
Total inodes count differs once the application starts.
- During the problem(when the application is in use)
# df -i /data Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on /dev/mapper/VG-LV 57085024 54386345 2698679 96% /data
- After resolution (When the application is not in use)
# df -i /data Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on /dev/mapper/VG-LV 2321190784 54342614 2266848170 3% /data
- Note that IUsed (column 3) stays almost exactly the same -- in both cases, there are ~54 million inodes used.
- But during the problem, the number of inodes (column 2) changes drastically - from 2.3 billion (2300 million) - down to 57 million.
Environment
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
- XFS
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