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From: feigin@inf.ethz.ch (Adam Feigin)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: tuning number of inodes for cnews
Keywords: inodes, SunOS 4.1.x
Message-ID: <26505@neptune.inf.ethz.ch>
Date: 3 Mar 91 19:41:36 GMT
References: <1991Mar1.230651.4574@NPIRS.Purdue.EDU> <1991Mar3.001647.18652@zoo.toronto.edu>
Sender: news@neptune.inf.ethz.ch
Reply-To: feigin@inf.ethz.ch (Adam Feigin)
Organization: Pixel Pushers of Switzerland
Lines: 48

You should be just fine if you are running SunOS 4.1.1, since by
default the installation gives you plenty of inodes. In the past
(SunOS 4.0.3), you couldn't even increase the number of inodes with
the -i parameter to newfs (it would silently ignore it), but you could
by 'lying' to mkfs about the disk geometry.

I just finished upgrading our mail/news gateway to 4.1.1, and I didn't
know that the installation created a large number of inodes; just to
be safe, I increased the number of inodes by feeding a lower number to
the -i option to newfs (the default is 2048). Now, I have this
partition with scads of inodes! Here's what I had before (default) and
after:

using default (what SunOS installation created for me):

380923 KB	193024 inodes

using -i option to increase # of inodes (I used  -i 1024 when I ran newfs):

356795 KB	386048 inodes

In its current state:

Filesystem            kbytes    used   avail capacity  Mounted on
/dev/xd0e             356795  318295   20660    94%    /var/spool/news

Filesystem             iused   ifree  %iused  Mounted on
/dev/xd0e             118730  267318    31%   /var/spool/news

I dont know if 4.1 created partitions with large numbers of inodes,
but 4.1.1 definitely does. Depending on how much news you keep around,
you will probably be fine with the default partition that the
installation creates for you. Our default expiry is 14 days, but some
groups are expired sooner. I will probably 'recreate' the default
partition when I get some time, since 31% inode usage on a 94% used
disk is a little outlandish, dont you think ?

							/AWF
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Internet: feigin@inf.ethz.ch				 Adam W. Feigin
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