Ubuntu 24.04 LTS – inode exhaustion causes writes to fail despite free space

📖 ~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

File creation fails although df shows available disk space.

Environment & Reproduction

Typically caused by huge counts of tiny files in cache or temp directories.

df -h
df -i

Root Cause Analysis

Filesystem inode table is exhausted before block storage is consumed.

Quick Triage

Locate mount points with high IUse% and identify top inode consumers.

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

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Drill into directories with extreme small-file counts.

sudo find /var -xdev -printf '%hn' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 20

Solution – Primary Fix

Remove stale temporary/cache files and restart affected services.

sudo find /var/tmp -type f -mtime +7 -delete
sudo apt-get clean

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Move high-churn paths to filesystem with larger inode capacity.

lsblk -f

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Inode utilization drops and new file creation succeeds.

df -i
touch /tmp/inode_test && rm -f /tmp/inode_test

Rollback Plan

Restore mistakenly deleted files from backup.

# restore required files from backup system

Prevention & Hardening

Set cleanup policies for temp/cache directories and monitor inode trends.

systemctl list-timers --all | grep -E 'tmp|clean'

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Related to no space left on device with normal disk free percentage.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

View all Ubuntu 24.04 LTS tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

Ubuntu filesystem and inode management references.