Public bug reported: I have a Trusty server system with mostly default configuration and very few additional packages. Root filesystem is ext4 created, I believe, by the installer; /var is on a different filesystem. For the last 18 months this server auto-updated automatically, but without autoremove; 12 months ago linux-generic-lts-xenial package was added. During this period it installed more than 60 kernel packages in total: 34 times for kernel 3.13 and another 27 times for kernel 4.4 (apparently it kept updating 3.13 despite presence of linux-generic-lts-xenial). Each time corresponding linux-headers-$version and linux-headers-$version-generic packages were installed, occupying another ~25K inodes per pair. /usr/src now contains more than 1.5M files and the root filesystem ran out of inodes, since by default it has slightly less than 2M allocated.
I'm reluctant to blame the problem on the lack of autoremove, since adding it would reduce reliability of the installation in terms of both unnecessary operations on packages and choice of kernels at boot. I understand that I should monitor inodes when putting a lot of small files (e.g. running some cache) or installing heavy packages, but it is the first time I see an almost empty installation killing itself this way. I don't think this is right. I see the following mitigations for the problem distribution-side: * increase default number of inodes for the ext4 root filesystem (or for all ext4 filesystems); * add warning to the installer that number of root inodes may not be sufficient for the lifetime of the installation; * find out if it's safe to remove linux-headers-generic package when linux-generic-lts-xenial is present and (if yes) add corresponding advice to the https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack page. ** Affects: ubuntu Importance: Undecided Status: New -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1722763 Title: Simply updating kernel regularly exhausts default number of inodes on ext4 To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1722763/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
