Questions tagged [inode]
Data structures used to store metadata for each file on a Unix/Linux filesystem.
81
questions
28
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5
answers
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How to get the actual directory size (out of du)?
How do I get the actual directory size, using UNIX/Linux standard tools?
Alternative question: How do I get du to show me the actual directory size (not disk usage)?
Since people seem to have ...
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26
votes
3
answers
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tail -f not tracking file changes
I was recently looking into using tail -f to monitor some text files like so: tail -f /var/sometext.
However, when I did some testing, it doesn't seem to work. What I did was I created a new file ...
Vince Tar
19
votes
7
answers
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Remove a file on Linux using the inode number
If you create a file on UNIX/Linux with special characters, such as touch \"la*, you can't remove it with rm "la*. You have to use the inode number (you can if you add the \ before the name, I know, ...
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13
votes
1
answer
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What is the difference between a disk block and a sector?
I know that a sector is the unit in which a track is splitted, but I had this doubt since I was looking for information about the maximum number of pointers that an inode can support. I found that ...
- 197
12
votes
3
answers
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Reverse lookup of inode/file from offset in raw device on linux and ext3/4?
In linux, given an offset into a raw disk device, is it possible to map back to an partition + inode?
For example, suppose I know that string "xyz" is contained at byte offset 1000000 on /dev/sda:
(e....
- 223
9
votes
2
answers
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"Disk quota exceeded" when writing to /tmp, but plenty of space (linux)
i have a VPS. It's managed with the notorious parallels plesk.
today i started seeing messages (via wordpress at first, but also from the command line shell), saying: "Disk quota exceeded".
user@...
- 1,533
8
votes
7
answers
4k
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Go to directory with unknown name
While unpacking a tarball, I encountered a directory which ls reports as "??????????????? ?????". Presumably, the name is not in unicode?
Anyway, I can't figure a way to access the folder.
I've tried ...
- 81
6
votes
2
answers
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XFS Incorrect statement of "No space left on device"
I have a server setup of an XFS partition on LVM on a Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS. While copying files to the home partition, "No space left on device" is displayed.
df -h displays sufficient space:
/dev/...
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5
votes
2
answers
6k
views
Will long time ext4lazyinit damage the drive? Why initializing inode tables in ext4 (no need any kinda init in NTFS)? etc
I never pay attention on ext4lazyinit before. But today, after I format my 4TB external USB harddrive and the first mount, the led light keeps blinking without any writes and reads. I figured out that ...
- 995
5
votes
5
answers
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Linux filesystem with inodes close on the disk
I'd like to make the ls -laR /media/myfs on Linux as fast as possible. I'll have 1 million files on the filesystem, 2TB of total file size, and some directories containing as much as 10000 files. ...
- 7,380
5
votes
2
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How to calculate proper amount of inode/block sizes for a linux filesystem
I have an old reiser filesystem which I'm going to convert to Ext3.
The problem I have is to determine the proper block- and inode-sizes for this partition.
The partition is 44 GB large and has to ...
user36559
4
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Why /proc and /sys have inode 1?
The directories /proc and /sys have inode value 1 even though it means "bad block". Both of them are functioning and I have another linux machine that in addition to these two, /boot also has inode 1.
...
- 228
4
votes
1
answer
1k
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Zero inodes even after formatting hard disk
I have an external 1Tb harddisk which due to some reason was showing following under df -i
Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/sdb1 0 0 0 - ...
- 303
4
votes
2
answers
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views
Is it possible to find all files with a given inode? Efficiently?
It is possible to find all the paths to a file with a given inode, in general, using find's -inum option. But this has awful performance for typical filesystems. What options are there to improve ...
- 2,902
4
votes
2
answers
307
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What exactly is an inode as pertaining to filesystems?
As I understand them, apparently an inode basically points to the beginning of a file stored on disk. But it also seems that directories have the same functionality as well (i.e., they store the ...
- 759
4
votes
1
answer
321
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What is the fastest way to make daily backups for 500k+ files?
We have an application that has generated so far over 540k images. The images are kept in a tree structure which is using 5 million Inodes so far.
We would like to backup the data daily in a remote ...
- 43
3
votes
3
answers
12k
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Access file by its id and change file attributes
Just like every file also directories have file id.
You can see them by typing
ls -i
How do I view file content by its id?
How do I change directory attribute to file (remove D) and vice versa!
- 241
3
votes
0
answers
293
views
Analyse allocated space in Ext4 partition to improve data recovery efficiency
I'm trying to use Lubuntu to recover as much data as possible from a failing 4TB hard disk drive.
According to GParted the main partition, formatted in Ext4, contains only 553GB of data. I attempted ...
- 855
3
votes
1
answer
10k
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Inodes that were part of a corrupted orphan linked list found. How to understand what caused it and how to solve?
I bought a Centurion Nano from the now defunct Alpha Computers, it ships with Alpha OS (that is essentially a tampered Ubuntu):
$ cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Alpha OS"
VERSION="1.0.0 Polaris"
ID="alpha-...
- 131
2
votes
1
answer
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Cannot mkdir: Too many links
I'm trying to untar several tar files. I encountered something like this
tar: NCBI_SRA_Metadata_Full_20110601/SRA037312: Cannot mkdir: Too many links
Is there a limit to the number of files that ...
- 1,199
2
votes
1
answer
21k
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Changing max inode count number in ext3 filesystem in Cent OS
Assuming that I use ext3 filesystem in Cent OS:
Can I increase the number of Free Inodes in the filesystem? If Yes how?
When I run
tune2fs -l /dev/sda1
it got these inodes statistics:
Filesystem ...
- 183
2
votes
1
answer
11k
views
What is the difference between FAT and Inode?
Since both are used to map the usage of disk space then how are they different from each other?
- 139
2
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1
answer
747
views
Can inode numbers be reused in HFS+?
Does the HFS+ file system reuse inode numbers after entries are fully deleted? I am trying to determine if the inode number always grows or if the numbers are reused.
- 21
2
votes
1
answer
35
views
Inconsistent behavior from 'find' on zfs under Linux
I was checking to see if I had multiple copies of python on my system today, and I got some super strange behavior from find:
mark@neverland:~/repos/lpod-python$ ls -i /bin/python3.10
534638 /bin/...
- 23
2
votes
1
answer
3k
views
"No space left on device" when writing to NTFS on Ubuntu
I'm on Ubuntu 12.04 and want to backup data to my external hard drive which is NTFS.
When running cp -rp or rsync, I get no space left errors like this:
`rsync: mkstemp "/media/Expansion Drive/.../...
- 201
2
votes
1
answer
4k
views
From where comes the inode number of a file mounted through NFS?
I asked a question on codereview to know if I could safely replace the following code:
:inode => [stat.ino, stat.dev_major, stat.dev_minor],
which threw NotImplementedError because of jruby not ...
- 143
2
votes
1
answer
317
views
Using inode number to locate hardlinks
How can I use the inode number to locate all hardlinks to the file "file.txt" in my home directory?
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1
answer
265
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On OS X, saving breaks hard links
I'm using OS X 10.10.5, and I'm seeing a strange issue with hardlinked files. When I update one of the linked files and save the change, the other linked file becomes blank -- a zero-byte file. This ...
- 21
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vote
2
answers
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How to change the inode size on an EXT3 partition?
The setup:
For my dual-boot laptop, I have bought a large hard drive to use as external USB solution. I decided to use EXT3 as filesystem, thinking to use Ext2IFS to access the drive from Windows (as ...
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1
vote
2
answers
151
views
how do I know if the number of inodes are already taken?
According to what I have read here http://www.linux.org/article/view/intro-to-inodes, the inode structure occuppies 1% of the storage unit size. Besides, it may happen (if I recall correctly due to a ...
mribeirodantas
1
vote
1
answer
583
views
How do "file headers", "bit maps" and "inodes" come into the picture when managing filesystems?
I'm a little confused on how these terms are thrown around in a book that I am reading.
Are they all different terms that refer to the same concept, or are they slightly different implementations ...
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1
vote
1
answer
402
views
Trying to understand how the deletion of hard links relate to the freeing up of values in the inode table?
When a hard link is deleted, the link is removed but the contents of the file itself continue to exist (that is, its space is not deallocated) until all links to the file are deleted.
My understanding ...
- 53
1
vote
1
answer
2k
views
How to remove directory flag?
I have a .trp video container witch is shown as a directory. Is there a quick way to remove the directory bit from the inode, so the folder is shown as a file? (Not sure if this solves my problem but ...
- 11
1
vote
3
answers
2k
views
remove a file with corrupted name
So this happened:
$ ls
''$'\342\200''abc2.16.5'
$ ls | od -c
0000000 342 200 a b c 2 . 1 6 . 5 \n
$ ls -il
76236897 -rw-rw-r-- 1 mob users 0 Aug 16 17:52 ''$'\342\200''abc2.16.5'
...
- 262
1
vote
1
answer
150
views
Kate changes inode
Why does Kate change inode when I change file? For example:
ookami@ookami-E7130:~/test$ touch test
ookami@ookami-E7130:~/test$ ln test test1
ookami@ookami-E7130:~/test$ ls -li
total 0
2782182 -rw-rw-...
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1
vote
1
answer
327
views
What is the efficiency of NTFS Junctions?
Long story short, I am using the steamtool application, which was originally developed for the following reasons:
Steam by default would save all your games to C:\
SSDs are becoming the new primary ...
1
vote
1
answer
126
views
WSL Ubuntu. How to remove a file with 0 hardlinks?
I somehow managed to end up with the following:
ls -la:
total 0
drwxrwxrwx 1 umain umain 4096 Jan 30 12:32 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 umain umain 4096 Jan 30 10:57 ..
-rw-r--r-- 0 umain umain 0 Jan 30 12:32 ...
- 121
1
vote
1
answer
1k
views
Which file attributes are stored in the directory entries and which in the inodes?
I want to do some deduplication of old files, replacing duplicates with hardlinks.
To minimize loss of metadata, I want to set the directory entry attributes of each new hardlink to the attributes of ...
- 1,519
1
vote
1
answer
539
views
Can a file be created from an inode?
There is an apache process which logs to an access and error log. The two log files have been deleted, but the apache process has not been restarted or reloaded so it still has open filehandles for ...
- 351
1
vote
1
answer
101
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effect on inode while resizing the LV
In Linux when we resize the partition with the logical volume(LV), how is the inode adjusted?
- 11
1
vote
1
answer
596
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Unable to boot to Ubuntu. Inconsistency in disk, X server didn't start. Illegal blocks in Inode
I am unable to boot into my Ubuntu system.
First I get that fsck died with exit status 4
Then I try to do it manually as prompted and I get that an Inode has illegal blocks and asked to clear it.
...
- 2,915
1
vote
1
answer
237
views
Are /var/mail/root and /var/spool/mail/root hardlinks for the same inode?
Just found out this:
# diff /var/mail/root /var/spool/mail/root
# (nothing)
# ls -i /var/mail/root /var/spool/mail/root
1284 /var/mail/root 1284 /var/spool/mail/root
Same content, same 1284 inode ...
- 61
1
vote
1
answer
347
views
fix corrupt file with same inode than an other (linux, ntfs)
While copying thousands of images on a new disk with a pi (raspbian), rsync stopped with an error, impossible to move temp file to correct file name.
The real file name actually exists but has the ...
- 139
1
vote
0
answers
512
views
Reading log files using logstash which rotates every day
I am reading a log file using file input plugin in logstash and sending this logs to elastic search. Log file is rotated at every 00:00. When I rotate log file, the file is zipped and moved to a ...
- 21
1
vote
0
answers
262
views
How do I modify an ext filesystem item given its inode number?
How do I modify a file/directory given their inode numbers?
Those inodes do not appear on a mounted filesystem as traversable directories / readable files and as such are undiscoverable by find ...
- 366
1
vote
1
answer
73
views
copying file from hfs+ to remote samba - preserving ownership and permissions
I've started backing up my file from my local OSX machine to remote samba filesystem. however, it seems that it doesn't copy the permission alright :
here's my mount configuration:
/Volumes/myvol (...
- 283
1
vote
0
answers
333
views
How many inodes I need?
I'm running a Buildroot image that has not the -i flag for df. I have near 100 MB of free space, but when I try to add a nodejs module using npm install I get the error "no free space left".
I guess ...
- 438
1
vote
1
answer
2k
views
Is it possible to limit the number of inodes for a user?
I want to limit the resources available to user by setting a limit on the number of inodes they can create. Is there a way to do this?
- 11
1
vote
0
answers
180
views
When referring to filesystems, what is the difference between a "live" and a "dead" inode?
My understanding of 'inodes' (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inode) is that they contain the information necessary to access certain blocks of a file, but not the file data itself. Then I was ...
- 759
0
votes
2
answers
10k
views
Tar directory to file in the directory being tar'ed
I have a mount-point, /media/xvdf1 which I use bindfs to mount at /var/lib/jenkins/jobs with user/group jenkins. I wish to back it up, but I do not have enough space on the other partition. After ...
- 2,296