Out of disk space but disk isn't full

Although your Linode's disk space may not be full, your Linode may be out of available inodes. An inode is a data structure that stores information about a file. Each file has a corresponding inode that describes permissions for the file, ownership, size, and other important metadata.

On a system with many small files, it's possible to run out of inodes before you run out of disk space. You can check your inode usage by running the following command:

df -i

Example output:

$ df -i
Filesystem      Inodes  IUsed   IFree IUse% Mounted on
udev            498741    370  498371    1% /dev
tmpfs           505357   1008  504349    1% /run
/dev/sda       3117120 170409 2946711    6% /
tmpfs           505357      1  505356    1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           505357      5  505352    1% /run/lock
tmpfs           505357     18  505339    1% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           505357     16  505341    1% /run/user/122
tmpfs           505357      6  505351    1% /run/user/1000

If your IUse% is nearing 100% on your root disk, in this case /dev/sda, you'll need to Resize Your Disk to increase the amount of available inodes. The amount of inodes roughly scales with the size of the disk.

If you've already allocated 100% of your disk space, you'll need to Resize Your Linode to a plan that includes more storage first.