Mind your inodes

[Artofconfusion]

So I am getting the Toshiba Tecra Laptop set up with gentoo and ran into a major FAIL

Evidently the default settings for mke2fs can cause a problem with the older small hard drives ( 4 gigs )

I was trying to compile and getting a device full error. There was plenty of room on the device when I run

Code: Select all

df

. However

Code: Select all

df -i

told a different story. Inodes were all used up. Yes, I was out of inodes. Unfortunately, if you're using e2fs you have to reformat the file system with different options. The only real fix was the following:

1. Delete temp files
2. Get rid of portage stuff with this

Code: Select all

rm -rf /usr/portage/distfiles/* && rm -rf /var/tmp/portage/* && rm -rf /var/log/portage/*

3. Create a stage 5 tarball re this page http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-534039.html
4. save the tarball on a different computer or disk
5. boot computer from linux CD and reformat drive with

Code: Select all

mke2fs -b 1024 -i 1024 -I 128 -j /dev/hdaX

6. mount drives as necessary (your letters may vary)

Code: Select all

livecd ~ # mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/gentoo
livecd ~ # mkdir /mnt/gentoo/boot
livecd ~ # mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/boot


7. copy the tarball to /mnt/gentoo and untar it

Code: Select all

livecd - # cd /mnt/gentoo
livecd - # tar xjvf stage5.tar.bz2


8. set up the new environment, chroot and run lilo

Code: Select all

livecd # cd /
livecd / # mount -t proc proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
livecd / # mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev
livecd / # cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/
livecd / # chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
livecd / # env-update && source /etc/profile
livecd / # lilo


9. reboot

You should be back in. if you don't follow step 8 so you can run lilo, your machine will likely not boot.