100% utilized inodes can cause issues to different GPDB utilites

Products

• VMware Tanzu Greenplum

Issue/Introduction

If the inodes are 100% consumed / utilized, it can cause issues with different GPDB utilities. For example:

gpstate:plxgplum01:gpadmin-[INFO]:-   Error Getting Segment Status
20210609:14:41:58:014613 gpstate:plxgplum01:gpadmin-[INFO]:-      Error Getting Segment Status      = Error getting status from host sdw4

In this example, running gpstate will return the above message even though the segments are running normally but the gpstate is unable to return the correct segment status.

Another example is, when taking a backup, the backup utility complains about the "No space left on device" error even though the segment disk has the storage available.

Environment

Product Version: 5.20

Resolution

Check if the inodes are 100% full or nearly 100% full. For example:

df -i /home/gpadmin

Filesystem                Inodes IUsed    IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/centos-home 10489856    38 10489818    1% /home

If the above command returns IUse% 100, it can cause issues similar the one mentioned above.

Free the inodes by deleting the files on the system. This needs to be done by the customer.

From INode:

"The inode (index node) is a data structure in a Unix-style file system that describes a file-system object such as a file or a directory. Each inode stores the attributes and disk block locations of the object's data."