Objective 2: Maintain the Integrity of Filesystems
Over the course of time, active filesystems can develop problems, such as:
A filesystem fills to capacity, causing programs or perhaps the entire system to fail.
A filesystem is corrupted, perhaps due to a power failure or system crash.
A filesystem runs out of inodes, meaning that new filesystem objects cannot be created.
Carefully monitoring and checking Linux filesystems on a regular basis can help prevent and correct these types of problems.
Monitoring Free Disk Space and Inodes
A read/write filesystem isn't much good if it grows to the point that it won't accept any more files. This could happen if the filesystem fills to capacity or runs out of inodes.
Inodes are the data structures within filesystems that describe files on disk. Every filesystem contains a finite number of inodes, set when the filesystem is created. This number is also the maximum number of files that the filesystem can accommodate. Because filesystems are created with a huge number of inodes, you'll probably never create as many files as it would take to run out of inodes. However, it is possible to run out of inodes if a partition contains many small files.
It is important to prevent space and inode shortages from occurring on system partitions. The df command gives you the information you need on the status of both disk space utilization and inode utilization.
df
- Syntax
df [
options] [file[file...]]- Description
Display overall disk utilization information ...
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