Sorry, I can't collect the report: apport isn't installed on the server, and the whole problem is that, having run out of inodes, I can't install anything (nor save files). Cleaning up and rebooting will destroy the logfiles of interest.
The key point here is that: root@archimedes:/home/rjn# dmesg | grep -i inode [ 0.004000] Inode-cache hash table entries: 524288 (order: 10, 4194304 bytes) [ 1.640998] EXT4-fs (xvda2): 1 orphan inode deleted i.e. there is an absence of the log message along the lines of: "Warning: /dev/xvda2 has run out of inodes, cannot create new file" As requested, confirming anyway. ** Changed in: linux (Ubuntu) Status: Incomplete => Confirmed -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Kernel Packages, which is subscribed to linux in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1665833 Title: inode exhaustion should be logged to dmesg Status in linux package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Problem: My server just became unusable, because it ran out of inodes (something that shouldn't happen on a relatively normal installation). The root-cause was a misbehaving CRM program creating way too many session files and never deleting them. However, while debugging, it would have been really really helpful if there were something in the logfiles. But it just failed silently: the lack of any error message makes diagnosing this error condition 100x harder than it should be. We get messages about being out of disk-space, but that's not helpful, especially when "df -h" shows it not to be true. So, the bug report/feature request is this: when the kernel cannot create a new file due to a shortage of inodes, it should emit a message to that effect, at least in dmesg (and ideally also to syslog). [For anyone else who chances upon this bug report, you can tell if you have run out of inodes with "df -i", and you can find the offending directories with: "find / -xdev -size +100k -type d" ] To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1665833/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages Post to : kernel-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp