Some inode questions

Ross Boylan
2009-05-05T18:40:03Z

When I first create /var I took all the defaults.  I have since decided
that, since it will hold a cyrus mail spool (each message is a file) I
should use something with more inodes.  I created a new (var2) partition
and formatted it with
# mkfs.ext3 -T news /dev/mapper/turtle-var2_crypt
# news has inode_ratio = 4096

Then I mounted and rsync'd from my existing /var.
Afterwords, I get a report that seems to indicate I've used almost no
inodes.  It also shows more inodes than blocks; is there any way one
could need more than one inode/block?
# dumpe2fs -h /dev/mapper/turtle-var2_crypt
dumpe2fs 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
Filesystem volume name:   <none>
Last mounted on:          <not available>
Filesystem UUID:          823219cf-30dc-42f9-ac96-1112bc7fe070
Filesystem magic number:  0xEF53
Filesystem revision #:    1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features:      has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index
filetype needs_recovery sparse_super large_file
Filesystem flags:         signed_directory_hash
Default mount options:    (none)
Filesystem state:         clean
Errors behavior:          Continue
Filesystem OS type:       Linux
Inode count:              6291456
Block count:              6291199
Reserved block count:     314559
Free blocks:              5853517
Free inodes:              6291445
First block:              0
Block size:               4096
Fragment size:            4096
Reserved GDT blocks:      1022
Blocks per group:         32768
Fragments per group:      32768
Inodes per group:         32768
Inode blocks per group:   2048
Filesystem created:       Tue May  5 11:10:32 2009
Last mount time:          Tue May  5 11:15:34 2009
Last write time:          Tue May  5 11:15:34 2009
Mount count:              1
Maximum mount count:      23
Last checked:             Tue May  5 11:10:32 2009
Check interval:           15552000 (6 months)
Next check after:         Sun Nov  1 10:10:32 2009
Reserved blocks uid:      0 (user root)
Reserved blocks gid:      0 (group root)
First inode:              11
Inode size:               256
Required extra isize:     28
Desired extra isize:      28
Journal inode:            8
Default directory hash:   half_md4
Directory Hash Seed:      95194688-7a78-4087-b013-1aec3e7a8436
Journal backup:           inode blocks
Journal size:             128M

As I read this, 6291445 of 6291456 inodes are free, so 11 are in use.
The comparable calculation on the origin file system shows about 8,500
inodes in use.

I'm on a 2.6.29 kernel, building file systems on top of encrypted
partitions, which in turn are on LVM logical volumes. e2fsprogs 1.41.3-1
on Debian Lenny, amd64 architecture, Xeon chips.

Can anyone explain what's going on?  Is -h not giving me the complete
inode story?

Thanks.
--
Ross Boylan                                      wk:  (415) 514-8146
185 Berry St #5700                               ross at biostat.ucsf.edu
Dept of Epidemiology and Biostatistics           fax: (415) 514-8150
University of California, San Francisco
San Francisco, CA 94107-1739                     hm:  (415) 550-1062