topic Re: inode question in Operating System - HP-UX

inode question

Charles McCary — Wed, 04 Apr 2001 17:24:10 GMT

Has anyone worked with large numbers of small files? I have a situation where I need to store a large number of small files. I know there is an inode limit, but what is it on 11.x vxfs? Also, any other issues?

thanks

Re: inode question

Rob Smith — Wed, 04 Apr 2001 17:44:14 GMT

There is no inode limit on vxfs, vxfs dynamically allocates inodes as necessary where hfs has a fixed number of inodes.

Rob Smith

Re: inode question

Steve Faidley — Wed, 04 Apr 2001 17:55:01 GMT

jfs dynamically allocates inodes. No need to worry.
Check the link below for HP's answer.

http://us-support2.external.hp.com/cki/bin/doc.pl/sid=b894badd0d3fa32a24/screen=ckiDisplayDocument?docId=200000006306362

Re: inode question

Carsten Krege — Thu, 05 Apr 2001 11:41:28 GMT

There is no problem with a lot of inodes on VxFS.

However, if the filesystem is very dynamic (ie. a lot of files are created and removed, the size of files changes) AND you have the Advanced Online JFS product you might want to defragment your filesystem more often as usual. The problem is for example that your directory inode can grow very large and can become very fragmented. In bad cases this can have a severe performance impact. This is more likely to occur if you use many small files on a dynamic filesystem.

To defragment (with Advanced (Online) JFS only) use

# fsadm -F vxfs -d -e -D -E

You cannot defragment on Base JFS. Refer also to the fsadm_vxfs(1m) man page.

Carsten

Re: inode question

CHRIS_ANORUO — Thu, 05 Apr 2001 12:21:00 GMT

On a JFS filesystem, there is no inode limit. It is advisable to limit ninode value below 4000 in the kernel for performance purposes. Check with sar -v or Glance