Hosting Operations
Risk: safeCheck Bytes and Inodes Before Cleanup
A host is failing writes and you need to know whether byte usage or inode usage is the tighter limit before deleting anything.
Command
df -h /lab/disk-inode-cleanup && df -ih /lab/disk-inode-cleanupBefore you run this
Risk: safe. Do not treat df output as a cleanup plan; it only identifies the pressured filesystem.
Expected output
Two filesystem tables: one for byte usage and one for inode usage.
System impact
Nothing changes. The command prints filesystem byte and inode summaries.
Recovery / rollback: no state is changed.
When to use it
Use at the start of disk incidents before deciding whether to hunt large files or huge counts of small files.
When not to use it
Do not treat df output as a cleanup plan; it only identifies the pressured filesystem.
Watch this command run
Example output from a temporary Linux lab
This example uses disposable sample files and sanitized output so you can inspect the shape of the result before touching a real system.
$ df -h /work/disk-inode-cleanup
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vda1 25G 19G 5G 80% /work
tmpfs 982M 12M 970M 2% /run$ df -ih /work/disk-inode-cleanup
Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/vda1 25G 19G 5G 80% /work
tmpfs 245K 14 245K 1% /runView reproducible demo details
This page shows the sanitized shell transcript and the setup steps needed to reproduce the example.
Lab setup steps
df -h /lab/disk-inode-cleanupdf -ih /lab/disk-inode-cleanup
next steps
Related commands
Check Inodes When Disk Space Looks Fine
Sometimes the disk has free bytes but still cannot create files.
df -ih
Rank Old Cleanup Candidates by Size
The oldest file is not always the file that buys back meaningful space.
find /lab/disk-inode-cleanup/var -xdev -type f -mtime +7 -printf '%s %TY-%Tm-%Td %p\n' | sort -nr | head
Find Directories Burning Inodes
Inode cleanup starts by finding the directory with too many files.
find /lab/disk-inode-cleanup/var/cache/app -xdev -type f -printf '%h\n' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head
Preview Old Temp Files Before Deleting
The safe version of cleanup is a candidate list first.
find /lab/disk-inode-cleanup/var/tmp/uploads -xdev -type f -mtime +7 -printf '%TY-%Tm-%Td %10s %p\n' | sort
Summarize Cache File Ages
Cache cleanup is safer when you know whether files are stale or still active.
find /lab/disk-inode-cleanup/var/cache/app -xdev -type f -printf '%TY-%Tm-%Td\n' | sort | uniq -c
Study mapping
Use this as independent command practice: read the notes, predict the output, then compare it with the example before using a real shell.
Useful for
- LPIC-1 style command-line practice
- LFCS style performance tasks
- Linux+ style troubleshooting review
Independent study support only. No affiliation, endorsement, exam dumps, or real exam questions.