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About inodes

In Ubuntu, each file and directory is a so-called inode. You can use df -i to check the number of inodes in use and available for all mounted filesystems.

Question

If you create a new EXT4-partition, it uses the default number of inodes, which under normal conditions should be sufficient. However, if you run a system that produces millions of small files, how do you need to create a new EXT4 partition with an extra large number of inodes? What is the maximum?

Comments

  • You can NOT change the number of available inodes AFTER the EXT4-partition has been created
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  • 1
    see askubuntu.com/questions/231585/running-out-of-inodes
    – Rinzwind
    Mar 23, 2015 at 8:02
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    @Rinzwind That is not the same question as it only asks how to find the large number of small files... it does not explain how to format a new EXT4 partition with extra large number of inodes. I will reopen my question.
    – bzero
    Mar 24, 2015 at 9:31
  • How can I disable that top banner saying that this question may already have been answered? This is a different question.
    – bzero
    Mar 25, 2015 at 14:46

3 Answers 3

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Using mkfs -t ext4 -N iNumberOfINodes /dev/XdY where iNumberOfINodes is a 32-bit number so the maximum possible number of inodes on any ext2/3/4 file system is 2^32-1, or 4,294,967,295 (~4 billion).

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    Are there any known performance drawbacks when configuring 4,000,000,000 iNodes?
    – bzero
    Mar 30, 2015 at 7:20
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    actually it's not: mkfs.ext4: too many inodes (4294967296), specify < 2^32 inodes
    – dalore
    Jun 14, 2017 at 17:27
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    @dalore off-by-one error: 2^32-1... Thanks for the feed-back, answer adapted... :-)
    – Fabby
    Jun 14, 2017 at 20:22
  • Note I also tried that, but got another error which wasn't very informative as to what number is accepted.
    – dalore
    Jun 20, 2017 at 13:54
  • have you tried 2^31???
    – Fabby
    Jun 23, 2017 at 9:22
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See the man page for mkfs.ext4. 

man mkfs.ext4

Option -N allows you to set the number of inodes created in the filesystem, and option -I allows you to increase their size (so they can handle more extended attributes of files). Adjust to fit your situation when you create the filesystem.

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  • Thanks, so -N is used at creation time whereas -l can be used to adjust the number of inodes AFTER the partition has been created? I will take a closer look at the man pages now...
    – bzero
    Mar 25, 2015 at 19:40
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    The -I changes the size of each inode in bytes at creation time. It will not allow you to increase the available number of them on existing filesystems.
    – TwoD
    Feb 18, 2017 at 22:24
  • "allows you to increase their size (so they can handle more files)" Increasing the inode size doesn't mean you can handle more files, the larger the bytes-per-inode ratio, the fewer inodes will be created, meaning fewer files can be handled.
    – ZN13
    Jun 4, 2019 at 13:50
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It's always a trade off between inodes and block size. 32-bit is the max, but the actual max depends on your disk/filesystem size divided by block size. Each file is at minimum one block. You can also specify the group size which determines how many blocks per inode. (i.e. bytes/inode)

All that will determine the number of inodes you can allocation for a particular disk size and block size.

It's also a trade off between performance versus file capacity. Smaller block size mean large files will be fragmented and require more I/O operations to load the file.

If you're gonna customize you need to read up or else you end up with a filesystem totally unsuitable for what you thought you wanted.

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