Best way to clear inodes?

Question

I have run out of inodes! I have a folder with millions of smaller files that I would like to keep. However, using df -i I see that I am 100% out of inode space. Can I just clear them? It appears I need to do something since I can’t even download the files through scp or sftp in order to clear them from my remote server.

Ideas? Suggestions?

Bobby · Accepted Answer

Hey! Quick update to this question here. I recently answered a similar question about this here: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/28-no-space-left-on-device-error Running out of inodes can be a real headache, especially when you have a folder with millions of smaller files. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered! Here’s a more efficient way to handle this using the find command directly. Identify Inode Usage :First, let’s identify which directories are consuming the most inodes. You can use the find command combined with wc -l to get a count of the inodes used by each directory. find / -xdev -type d -exec sh -c 'echo -n "{}: "; find "{}" | wc -l' \; | sort -n -k2 This command will give you a sorted list of directories with their inode usage. Drill Down Further :Once you’ve identified the main directory, you need to drill down further. For example, if /home is the culprit: find /home -xdev -type d -exec sh -c 'echo -n "{}: "; find "{}" | wc -l' \; | sort -n -k2 Keep drilling down until you find the specific directory causing the issue. Handle Hidden Files :Include hidden files in your search by specifying the appropriate paths: find /home/youruser -xdev -type d -exec sh -c 'echo -n "{}: "; find "{}" -name ".*" | wc -l' \; | sort -n -k2 Clean Up :Once you’ve found the directory with the most inodes, it’s time to clean up. Here are a few strategies: Delete Unnecessary Files :Identify and delete files you don’t need. For example, temporary files, logs, or cache files: find /home/youruser/temp -type f -delete Automate Cleanups :To prevent this from happening again, you can set up a cron job to regularly clean up unnecessary files: crontab -e Add a job to clean up temporary files every week: 0 3 * * 0 find /home/youruser/temp -type f -mtime +7 -delete Increase Inode Limit :If the issue persists and you can’t delete any more files, consider resizing your filesystem to increase the inode limit. This is a more complex operation and might require backing up your data. Here are some commands to help you get started: # Check inode usage df -i # Identify high inode usage directories find / -xdev -type d -exec sh -c 'echo -n "{}: "; find "{}" | wc -l' \; | sort -n -k2 # Drill down into specific directories find /home -xdev -type d -exec sh -c 'echo -n "{}: "; find "{}" | wc -l' \; | sort -n -k2 # Include hidden files in search find /home/youruser -xdev -type d -exec sh -c 'echo -n "{}: "; find "{}" -name ".*" | wc -l' \; | sort -n -k2 # Delete unnecessary temporary files find /home/youruser/temp -type f -delete # Compress files tar -czvf archive.tar.gz /home/youruser/folder # Move files to another server scp -r /home/youruser/folder user@other-server:/path/to/destination # Automate cleanups with cron job crontab -e By following these steps, you should be able to clear up some inodes and prevent this issue from recurring in the future. - Bobby

Andrew SB · Answer

An inode is allocated at the file level so it’s quite possible to run out of inodes long before you run out of disk if you have millions of smaller files. If you are completely out of inodes, you’ll have to delete what you can. You’ll probably want to reboot in order to make sure there aren’t any processes holding onto the files in memory. Obviously, this isn’t a long term solution. You’ll probably need to either use a bigger droplet or look into using and external storage component that you can mount as a network file system.

michaelezurn · Answer

Your inodes are full, so there’s files somewhere in your server occupying them. To find what’s consuming inode space, run this: for i in /*; do echo $i; find $i |wc -l; done After it returns the sizes of each item, look through them and see which directory is the biggest. Keep drilling down directories a few times until you found the culprit folder. It’s probably log files (error logs/admin logs), PHP session files, or in my case, mod cache disk. I had to keep going into the /var folder, show below. for i in /var/*; do echo $i; find $i |wc -l; done Once my search showed that /var/cache/apache2/mod_cache_disk was using almost 100% of my inodes, i deleted the folder and restarted apache and the server, making my inode usage only 4%, down from 100%. service apache2 restartreboot

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Best way to clear inodes?

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Best way to clear inodes?