You may need more inodes if you store lots of emails locally in maildir format (was: Re: Buster Installation - Partition phase - Inode option to choose - SSD or Mechanical HD
On Saturday, August 24, 2019 08:33:30 PM Rick Thomas wrote:
> > On Aug 24, 2019, at 4:18 PM, list@contacte.xyz wrote:
> >
> > What would be the «best» to choose for an SSD in an usual desktop
> > environment ? What would be the «best» to choose for an mechanical HD in
> > an usual desktop environment ?
>
> I don’t think there’s any difference between SSD and spinning disk (for the
> particular question of how many inodes are needed).
>
> If your planned usage is “typical” then, for either type of hardware,
> “typical usage” is the right choice. If you have a particular use in mind
> that is known to involve lots of small files, then “news” might be more
> appropriate.
Hmm, this raised a question in my mind (not for myself so much) -- I use mbox
(vs. maildir) as much as possible to store emails.
(kmail (the older version I use (on Wheezy) uses maildir for the inbox and
maybe some other "kmail system" "folders", e.g., sent-mail (yes, just
checked). For all the folders I set up, I set them up as mbox, but, it seems
that kmail sometimes decides to convert them to maildir for some reason (maybe
if the mbox file gets too big, for some definition of too big?) (Far aside: and
for other reasons, I want to keep my "folders" in mbox format (for
compatibility with some other applications.)
Anyway, as many of us know, mbox keeps all the emails in a given folder in one
file, while maildir stores each email in a separate file.
I suppose that, for someone who was going to archive a lot of mail and store
it in maildir format, they might have to consider more inodes (i.e., the news
option).
(Even further aside: I am worried that when I upgrade to Buster or such, the
kmail included might no longer support mbox -- I got that impression
somewhere, and I tried asking the question on a(n "official") kmail list, but
did not get a clear answer (or I didn't really understand the answer -- I'll
have to go back and look for that answer again and re-read it.)
>
> As a real-world example, here’s a system I set up a couple of years ago (so
> it’s had enough time to reach an equilibrium state) with “typical usage”
> (the default).
>
>
> rbthomas@monk:~$ df -ih | grep -v tmpfs
> Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
> udev 3.0M 580 3.0M 1% /dev
> /dev/mapper/monk--vg-root 1.8M 258K 1.5M 15% /
> /dev/sda1 61K 337 61K 1% /boot
> /dev/mapper/monk--vg-home 5.3M 43K 5.2M 1% /home
> /dev/mapper/monk-download 50M 374 50M 1% /download
> /dev/mapper/monk-export 25M 18 25M 1% /export
>
>
> Enjoy!
> Rick
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