When I see a system run out of inodes, it's usually because there's some directory full of little or zero length files there somewhere.

I didn't learn this until recently but Linux will store the file contents in the inode itself if it's under a certain size (around 60 bytes). So it's possible that you don't even notice the space drain until you run out of inodes.

Sean

On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 6:09 PM, Trevor Cordes <trevor@tecnopolis.ca> wrote:

On 2015-03-20 Kevin McGregor wrote:
> I have a Ubuntu 10.04.3 (I know) system with many old kernel images.
> The problem (maybe) is I've been told the system is out of inodes. I

Oops.

> thought I would try to get rid of at least one old kernel image, and
> this happens:
>
> $ sudo apt-get -y purge linux-image-2.6.32-28-server
> linux-headers-virtual: Depends: linux-headers-2.6.32-66-server but
> it is not going to be installed or
> linux-headers-2.6.32-66-generic-pae
> but it is not installable

"not installable" may indicate out-of-space/inodes. Or you have some
weird combo of dep packages installed for the old kernel (-28) that
aren't also in the new (-66). Perhaps the inode problem has screwed
things up on earlier updates.

I would start by clearing up several thousand inodes elsewhere on the
system. This could be as simple as popping on a usb stick or external
drive and mv'ing a bunch of stuff from a home dir or data dir to it
temporarily. Once that is done, then fight with apt-get.

Curiously, what does df -i / and df -k / say?

Did you tweak the NBPI / other inode specs at mkfs time on this box?
Very weird a non-tweaker user would run out of inodes these days... not
like us inode tweakers :-) (Trevor motto: if it's tweakable, tweak it!)
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