Subject: Re: [vserver] vservers and inodes
From: Herbert Poetzl <herbert@13thfloor.at>
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2010 15:49:55 +0200

On Mon, Jun 07, 2010 at 12:02:16PM +0200, Tor Rune Skoglund wrote:
> Hi List,

> I've ran into a strange (possibly) inode problem within
> one vserver. Althought df -i on the host shows that the
> filesystem on which the vserser lives has IUse of only 1%,
> we get "cannot create" errors on new files.

cannot create is not necessarily an indication to running
out of inodes ... could you please strace -fF one of those
and provide the trace via some pastebin?

> Having seen that there is a configuration option
> for the maximum number of inodes dedicated to a vserver,
> I have the following questions:

> - What is the default limit when this option is not set?

when the dlimit is unset, the number of inodes is unlimited

> - What mechanism is used when checking and enforcing vserver
>   inode limits?

the kernel takes care of that

> - The total number of inodes on the filesystem on which the
>   vserver lives is 324350 at the moment.
>   Could someone comment if is so high that special actions
>   need to be taken?

nope, I have several millions of inode in use, and except
for a certain memory overhead (for the caches) there is no
problem to be expected ....

> - Could any other limit be causing the error? E.g. number of
>   files limit or whatever?

could be, strace will probably shed some light on that

> Here are some server facts:
> * Gentoo vserver kernel, 2.6.32-vs2.3.0.36.28
> * util-vserver 0.30.216_pre2883
> * Filesystem ext3, default settings when formatting

best,
Herbert

> Best regards,
> Tor Rune Skoglund