Oracle Linux 10 – filesystem inode exhaustion despite free disk space – Fix & Prevention

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents

1. Symptom & Impact
2. Environment & Reproduction
3. Root Cause Analysis
4. Quick Triage
5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
6. Solution – Primary Fix
7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
9. Rollback Plan
10. Prevention & Hardening
11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Applications fail to create files even though disk space appears available.

Environment & Reproduction

Common on log heavy workloads or cache directories with many small files.

df -h
df -i
find /var -xdev -type f | wc -l

Root Cause Analysis

A small number of directories consume most inodes due to tiny file churn.

Quick Triage

Identify mount points and top inode consuming paths.

df -i
for d in /var /tmp /home; do echo $d; find $d -xdev -type f | wc -l; done

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Locate high density directories and determine retention gaps.

find /var -xdev -printf '%hn' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head
journalctl --disk-usage

Solution – Primary Fix

Purge stale small files and rotate logs aggressively.

find /var/tmp -xdev -type f -mtime +7 -delete
logrotate -f /etc/logrotate.conf
df -i

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Recreate filesystem with higher inode density during maintenance.

mkfs.xfs -i maxpct=25 /dev/vg0/lvvar

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Inode usage returns below alert threshold and file creation resumes.

df -i
touch /var/tmp/inode_test_file

Rollback Plan

Restore accidentally removed files from backup snapshots.

rsync -a /backup/var/tmp/ /var/tmp/

Prevention & Hardening

Implement retention jobs and inode capacity monitoring.

crontab -l
find /var/tmp -xdev -type f -mtime +7 | wc -l

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Can present with tmpfs pressure and application cache leaks.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for oracle-linux-10.

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Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

Oracle Linux filesystem capacity and retention policy documentation.