Wildly inaccurate "DISKWARN" notifications

[Smartypants]

For the past few months, I've been receiving consistently inaccurate DISKWARN notices from one of our CPanel servers. For example, I just received a notice claiming that the server is using "92.298825%" of the available diskspace - which is inconsistent with not only the output of "df" on that server (Used: 76%), but also the "Disk Usage" stats in WHM on the same server (which also shows 76% used).

In addition, the amounts listed are even more inaccurate: the notice claims that the usage is "3,691,953/4,000,000" - there's no unit specified, so I can only assume that's kb. Which means that CPanel thinks the server only has 4GB of diskspace, when it actually has 200GB of space - a discrepancy of 16% is one thing, but that's off by an order of magnitude.

As it stands, the diskspace notifications on that server are far too inaccurate to be any use. Is there a workaround - or if not, when can we expect CPanel to address this issue?

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello,

Could you run the "df -i" command to see if the notification is referring to the disk inodes (e.g. the number of available files).

Thank you.

 

[Smartypants]

Hello,

Could you run the "df -i" command to see if the notification is referring to the disk inodes (e.g. the number of available files).

Thank you.

Sorry for the delay - thought I'd subscribed to this thread, but I didn't get a notification.

When I run "df -i", the output is consistent with the DISKWARN notifications from CPanel. So these are inode usage warnings, rather than disk/filesystem usage warnings?

In fairness, I should have read the message closer - I see now that it does mention inodes in two places. But it's fairly easy to miss, the messages seem to be identical to the diskspace usage warnings, except that in the line "you currently use [XX]% of its available blocks" the word "blocks" is replaced with "inodes" - and one row heading shows "Inode Usage" instead of "Disk Block Usage".

That could definitely be made a bit clearer, at least by specifying in the subject line that the unit is inodes. Probably wouldn't hurt to make it a little more distinct from the disk usage warnings as well, perhaps titling the EMails "INODEWARN" instead of "DISKWARN" - since I wouldn't consider inode usage the same thing as diskspace usage (I can think of plenty of edge cases where there would be an even greater discrepancy between disk & inode usage than the 20% difference on our server).

I'd also suggest displaying that info somewhere in WHM - either under the existing "Disk Usage" display, or on its own page. It appears that there's an option to view the inode usage for individual accounts within CPanel - but no way within WHM to see the inode usage for the entire server/filesystem?

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello,

Is there any particular change to the message subject you'd like to see when the notification relates to inode usage?

I'd also suggest displaying that info somewhere in WHM - either under the existing "Disk Usage" display, or on its own page. It appears that there's an option to view the inode usage for individual accounts within CPanel - but no way within WHM to see the inode usage for the entire server/filesystem?

I recommend opening a feature request for the ability to see the overall inode usage in WHM if that's something you'd like to see added to the product:

Submit A Feature Request

Thank you.