Wondering what is inodes in linux?. inode normally referred to as the Index Node. An inode is a layout structure in a UNIX-based file system that describes a file system object like files and directories.
Every inode contains attributes and disk block target location of the file or directory. Inode includes metadata of file system attributes like time of last change, time of last access, time of last modification, file ownership details, file permission details.
It can be treated as directories are lists of names assigned to inodes. Directory always contains an entry for itself, parent and its children.
You might have seen while creating any new file system in linux. inodes get created at that time of new file system creation when using mkfs command.
The number of inodes depends upon file system size because inode size depends upon block size. You also might have faced a situation when inodes get full even file system to have enough free space.
For example, mail systems like sendmail or postfix create too many files and it fills up inodes of the file system. No more files get created or updated and have a good chance application to fail as it has no space to write any data.
Normally mail system creates too many files in the /var/spool/clientmqueue directory. Logically it happens because if any inode consumes one block of the disk.
Normally 512 bytes block even inode size is anything below 512 bytes but it will not hold any other data.
Linux and Unix both use similar inode concepts. These were a few details about what is inode in linux. Let us see how we can check inode in linux and unix.
Table of Contents
How to check inodes in linux
How to check inodes in linux is as below. ls,df,stat command is really helpful in
getting details of inodes in linux. Few example has been displayed below which
might be helpful to understand.
[root@linsrv01 ~]#stat passwd |grep Inode
Device: 802h/2050d Inode: 1193625 Links: 1
[root@linsrv01 ~]# ls -i passwd
1193625 passwd
[root@linsrv01 ~]# ls -ai passwd
1193625 passwd
[root@linsrv01 ~]# df -ih
Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 1.3M 149K 1.2M 12% /
devtmpfs 4.0M 455 4.0M 1% /dev
tmpfs 4.0M 1 4.0M 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 4.0M 884 4.0M 1% /run
tmpfs 4.0M 16 4.0M 1% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda1 126K 349 125K 1% /boot
/dev/sda3 513K 13K 501K 3% /var
/dev/sda5 256K 106 256K 1% /tmp
/dev/sda6 256K 735 256K 1% /var/log
/dev/sda7 128K 16 128K 1% /var/log/audit
[root@linsrv01 ~]# stat /var
File: â/varâSize: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 directory
Device: 803h/2051d Inode: 2 Links: 28
Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2020-01-10 02:08:14.851047321 -0500
Modify: 2019-10-31 01:51:52.137319406 -0400
Change: 2019-10-31 01:51:52.137319406 -0400
Birth: -
[root@linsrv01 ~]#df -i /var
Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 525200 9159 516041 2% /var
How to check inodes in Solaris
The process for how to check inodes in solaris is as below.
[root@solsrv01 ~]# df -oi /var
Filesystem iused ifree %iused Mounted on
/dev/vx/dsk/bootdg/var 52637 943267 5% /var
So now we have a fair idea of how to check inodes in linux. This might be really helpful in case if you get inode full case.
If you see file system usage and if it is not filled it must be because of inodes are exhausted. You can validate this from the messages file with a message like no space left on the device.
That`s it about inodes in linux, and how to check inodes in linux, how to check inodes in solaris as a bonus. I hope you will like it and it must have given some clarity regarding the concept of the inode.
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