Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 6 Feb 1999 11:15:06 -0800 (PST) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: Linux-2.2.2-pre2.. |
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On Sat, 6 Feb 1999, Oleg Drokin wrote: > > LT> - inode leak thing > There is still something wrong, I think. > Just after I run inode hog, I get: > mordor:~# cat /proc/sys/fs/inode-nr > 2198 83 > mordor:~# cat /proc/sys/fs/inode-max > 2048 > Then I run memory hog and expect some of unused inodes to be shrinked, to > free some memory, but alas! > mordor:~# cat /proc/sys/fs/inode-state > 2198 50 1 0 0 0 0 > Number of inodes is not decreased. > Or do I misunderstood these numbers somehow?
The inode numbers can easily grow past the "maximum", but once it reaches the maximum the growth should be stunted and controlled. The above is exactly the kind of behaviour you should expect: inodes freely grow until they hit the max number, and then the growth should slow down quite noticeably. Think of "max" as a soft limit rather than a hard one.
The thing is, that inodes are so critical that having a hard limit for them can result in serious problems (and the machine dies completely). In 2.0.x, for example, when this happened the machine usually died and printed out a kernel message like "No more inodes, contact Linus", and too many people have...
Linus
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