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
parker@zaphod.mpr.ca (Ross Parker) (02/03/90)
In article <2915@decuac.DEC.COM>, jeff@artud2.enet.dec.com (Jeff Finkelstein) writes: > 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 The problem may actually be that you're running into the *system* limit on gnodes, rather than the individual filesystem's inode limit (depends on where, and under what circumstances the error message is appearing). To check which it is, do a 'pstat -T'. You'll see something similar to: waters$ pstat -T 206/ 590 files 258/ 432 gnodes 107/ 276 processes 39/ 37/ 76 active/reclaimable/total texts 142/ 334 00k swap here, 258 out of a possible 432 in-core gnodes are allocated. If your allocated number of gnodes is much closer to your maximum than mine is, you can fix this by rebuilding and installing a kernel with a larger limit. The easiest way to do this is to increase the 'maxusers' parameter. I have maxusers set to '32' on all of our systems regardless of what the license limit is. This, for us, is mandatory else we run out of gnodes really fast! Hope this helps! Ross Parker parker@mpre.mpr.ca (604)293-5495 uunet!ubc-cs!mpre!parker
parker@zaphod.mpr.ca (Ross Parker) (02/03/90)
> The problem may actually be that you're running into the *system* limit > on gnodes, rather than the individual filesystem's inode limit (depends > on where, and under what circumstances the error message is appearing). > I should probably expand on this... What I've called here the 'system' limit is implying that you're running out of in-core gnodes... i.e. you have more open files than the system can currently handle. The filesystem limit defines how many files can exist on the disk. Both limits may need to be adjusted. As the problem is happening in your 'news' partition, it's quite conceivable that your are running into the hard filesystem limit and will need to rebuild your disk (ugh!). For your sake, I hope you're just running out of in-core gnodes. On our systems at least, popping in a new kernel is a much easier procedure! BTW - this is the only case that I personally have seen the 'out of gnodes' message - I seem to recall in the distant past that when a filesystem ran out of physical inodes, the message was quite different, but then, that was aeons ago, and the messages have quite likely changed. Just do a 'df -i' to check your physical inode allocation. Ross Parker parker@mpre.mpr.ca (604)293-5495 uunet!ubc-cs!mpre!parker
jwp@cupcake.sal.wisc.edu (Jeffrey W Percival) (02/04/90)
In article <2049@eric.mpr.ca> parker@zaphod.mpr.ca (Ross Parker) writes: >What I've called here the 'system' limit is implying that you're running >out of in-core gnodes... i.e. you have more open files than the system >can currently handle. > >The filesystem limit defines how many files can exist on the disk. Both >limits may need to be adjusted. As the problem is happening in your 'news' >partition, it's quite conceivable that your are running into the hard >filesystem limit and will need to rebuild your disk (ugh!). I've received a number of very helpful replies, of which this is an example, and my thank-you's didn't all make it through the address labyrinth... I looked into the system limits and the filesystem limits, and it appears my problem is indeed with the filesystem. News articles tend to be small, and use up fewer than the average number of blocks. Hence they deplete the reserve of inodes disproportionately. Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to rebuild my filesystem I go... -- Jeffrey W Percival (jwp@larry.sal.wisc.edu) (608)262-8686