issues with inodes in vxfs

[cleris]

Hi friends,

I have a 11.23 rx7640 server with the following vxfs installed.
Base-VXVM B.04.10.011 Base VERITAS Volume Manager Bundle 4.1 for HP-UX

In one of the fileystem I have 5 crores of inodes and hence I am missing 12GB of available space.I dont have any files in the filesyetm now.

Can anybody help me to know how the vxfs removes the free inodes from the inodetable

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi Cleris,

---
I have a 11.23 rx7640 server with the following vxfs installed.
Base-VXVM B.04.10.011 Base VERITAS Volume Manager Bundle 4.1 for HP-UX
---

VXVM is the Volume Manager not the filesystem.

Try to search for the JFS or the VXFS product.

---
In one of the fileystem I have 5 crores of inodes and hence I am missing 12GB of available space.I dont have any files in the filesyetm now.
---

I've got no idea what crores are..

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[Bill Hassell]

> crores

Depending on whether this is Iranian (500 thousand) or Indian (10 million), this appears to be a filesystem that had thousands of files that were removed. However, once an inode has been created, removing a file leaves the inode available for reuse but it is not removed. If you use the ll -d command like this:

ll -d /bigFilesystem

The size of the directory shows the space needed for inodes, used or free. If the missing 12GB of space is not in the directory itself, then there are files which are still open to some application. Even though the files were removed, if the application is still running, the space will not be released. You can verify this by trying to umount the filesystem. umount will fail if there are open files or directories.

[cleris]

hi Bill,

I have successfully unmounted and checked the filesyetem.

Robert,

It will be better if I explain my issue..
Filesystem kbytes used avail %used Mounted on
/dev/vg01/lvol1 217872143 98564 204453645 0% /data1

the above is my my bdf output

In the above output there is a mismatch of 13GB space.
Following is the bdf -i output
# bdf -i
Filesystem kbytes used avail %used iused ifree %iuse Mounted on
/dev/vg01/lvol1 217872143 98564 204453645 0% 4 54475708 0% /data1

And now i dont have any files in the filesystem.But still the vxfs is keeping the record of 54475708 these many inodes resulting in the mismatch of 13GB.
How vxfs will remove the free inodes...?

[TTr]

> How vxfs will remove the free inodes...?

I can't tell if you are looking for a method to specifically delete free inodes or just claim your disk space but since there are no files in the filesystem, you can unmount it again and "newfs -F vxfs /dev/vg01/rlvol1"

[OldSchool]

"But still the vxfs is keeping the record of 54475708 these many inodes resulting in the mismatch of 13GB."

there are 54475708 free i-nodes available for use in /data1. 4 are used. I see nothing that indicates 12-13 GB are missing.

if "du -k /data1" output matches "bdf -k /data1" then I would think that everything is ok. If it doesn't, then you have unlinked open file(s) somewhere in data1.

the 5+ free i-nodes certainly aren't taking up that space and should be of no concern.

[OldSchool]

make that "the 5M+ free i-nodes....."

[TTr]

Each inode takes 256 bytes in the filesystem. Multiply that by the 54million inodes that were created when that many files existed in the filesystem, gives you the ~13GB of space that is taken.

[TTr]

I am actually off by 3 digits. The space used in inodes is 13MB. There is certainly 13GB missing if you look in the kbytes of the filesystem (217GB) and the kbytes avail (204). The number is again 13GB and that's what through me off. Maybe there is some kind of a filesystem corruption.

[Bill Hassell]

> > How vxfs will remove the free inodes...?

Easy. Since there are no files at all, you umont the filesystem and run newfs. Now all your space is back. If you can't umount the filesystem make sure no user is cd'ed into the mountpoint. Still can't umount? Then there is an open file (or files) which cannot be seen. This happens when a remove is done on a poorly protected file. The directory entry is gone but the inodes are still open. If you don't have lsof, a reboot will take care of the umount problem.