[comp.unix.questions] what are gnodes?

jwp@larry.sal.wisc.edu (Jeffrey W Percival) (02/02/90)

We often get the message "out of gnodes" in our news partition
on our Ultrix microvaxen.  I read up on the Unix file system,
and learned the basics of blocks and inodes and such, but uncovered
no reference to "gnodes".

where are these described, and how do I manipulate them to prevent
usenet news from giving us so much grief?
-- 
Jeffrey W Percival (jwp@larry.sal.wisc.edu) (608)262-8686

jeff@artud2.enet.dec.com (Jeff Finkelstein) (02/02/90)

In article <821@larry.sal.wisc.edu> jwp@larry.sal.wisc.edu (Jeffrey W Percival) writes:
>We often get the message "out of gnodes" in our news partition
>on our Ultrix microvaxen.  I read up on the Unix file system,
>and learned the basics of blocks and inodes and such, but uncovered
>no reference to "gnodes".
>
>where are these described, and how do I manipulate them to prevent
>usenet news from giving us so much grief?

The gnode is the in memory data structure that defines the inode
information. It actually contains more information than the inode
itself, particularly relating to the ULTRIX file system. See the
file /usr/include/sys/gnode.h for more information.

Regarding the problem, increase the number of inodes in the filesystem
that you have your news files going to (or decrease the number of
files). 

BTW - can you send a description of the filesystem to me for future
reference?

-jeff

--

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Finkelstein		Internet:   jeff@artud2.enet.dec.com
ULTRIX Support			UUCP:       ...!decuac!artud2!jeff

jim@cs.strath.ac.uk (Jim Reid) (02/02/90)

In article <821@larry.sal.wisc.edu> jwp@larry.sal.wisc.edu (Jeffrey W Percival) writes:
>We often get the message "out of gnodes" in our news partition
>on our Ultrix microvaxen.  I read up on the Unix file system,
>and learned the basics of blocks and inodes and such, but uncovered
>no reference to "gnodes".

Gnodes are DEC's term for generic inodes. Ultrix uses a virtual file
system which manipulates files using these gnodes. This is more or less
the same thing as the virtual file system inodes (vnodes) used in other
UNIX boxes running NFS. Beneath this virtual layer lie filesystem
specific data structures and routines. For a conventional UNIX file
system, these data structures will be inodes. For a VMS file system
or NFS file system, these will be something else.

>where are these described, and how do I manipulate them to prevent
>usenet news from giving us so much grief?

I would guess that 'out of gnodes' is a misleading error message that
means your news partition has run out of inodes. If so, you have two
options: delete files to free up inodes (say by expiring news articles
more rapidly) or rebuild the filesystem with a higher inode density
(check the -i option to newfs).

		Jim