*BSD News Article 42846


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From: se@parc03.MI.Uni-Koeln.DE (Stefan Esser)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: Prob w/ WD 1 gig Drive and FreeBSD 2.0R
Date: 16 Feb 1995 18:09:11 GMT
Organization: Institute for Mathematics, University of Cologne, Germany
Lines: 78
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <3i04c7$810@news.rrz.uni-koeln.de>
References: <3htjrf$t0m@earth.usa.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: parc03.mi.uni-koeln.de

In article <3htjrf$t0m@earth.usa.net>, kbethke@earth (Scotty bethke) writes:
|> Ive come upon a strange error with the FreeBSD-RELEASE 2.0 and my Western 
|> DIgital 1 Gig IDE drive (WDC3100).
|> 
|> The drive fills to about 78% and I get this error from the kernel:
|> 
|> Feb 15 13:57:27 news kernel: uid 0 on /var/spool/news: out of inodes
|> Feb 15 13:57:27 news last message repeated 4 times

There is some fixed number 
of inodes (== files) per 
file system. 

This number is generally 
choosen in the order of 
one inode per 2KB to 10KB,
depending on what you use 
the partition for.

If partitions were always
created with 2KB/inode,
then they take some 7% of
the partition size (i.e.
70MB/1GB).

With the current default 
of 4 fragments (i.e. 4KB)
per inode, this reduces 
to some 4. 

You can easily create a
file system with a different
number of inodes:

BEWARE: THIS DESTROYS THE CURRENT 
CONTENTS OF THAT PARTIITION !!!

# newfs -i 2000 /dev/sd0e

You might even goto a fragment
size of 512 Byte for a news 
partition, this might give some
10% more usable capacity in 
this special case ...

# news -b 4096 -f 512 /dev/sd0e

|> I try "fsck" and it reports (usually) a size miss-match error and the 
|> Clean Flag error, which gets reset, I reboot, and then fsck reports no 
|> errors.  As soon as I try to copy stuff to the drive, or (in the case of 
|> this drive) spool news to it, I get the above kernel error.  

Well, it's not a kernel error ...
You just filled the file table for
that partition.

|> Any hints or tips would be most welcome!  has anyone got a WD 1 Gig IDE 
|> drive working with this version of FreeBSD?  Ive got a Maxtor 340 that 
|> works fine (I can fill it to about 105% before I get NO SPACE errors)

Well, the 100% number is adjusted 
to the number of blocks a "normal"
user can fill. There is generally 
10% reserved for system processes
and for better performance.

The 4KB/inode number is sufficient
for most uses, in fact I'm generally 
using 8KB/inode (resulting in another
20MB/GB space for files ...)

Reagrds,
-- 
 Stefan Esser				Internet:	<se@ZPR.Uni-Koeln.DE>
 Zentrum fuer Paralleles Rechnen	Tel:		+49 221 4706019
 Universitaet zu Koeln			FAX:		+49 221 4705160
 Weyertal 80
 50931 Koeln