Which commands help distinguish between a full filesystem and inode exhaustion?

• A. df -h is the full space view; df -i reveals inode depletion.
• B. df -i shows space usage; df -h shows inode usage.
• C. du -h reveals inode depletion.
• D. ls -l reveals inode usage.

Answer: (A)

When you’re trying to tell apart a filesystem that’s actually out of space from one that’s out of inodes, you want to look at both space and inode counts. The df command reports how much space is available on each filesystem, and adding -h gives a human-friendly view of total, used, and free space. Inodes are a separate resource that track how many files can exist; df with -i shows the total inodes, how many are used, and how many are free. If df -h shows free space but df -i shows all inodes in use, you’re dealing with inode exhaustion. If df -h shows no free space, the issue is space exhaustion. The other commands don’t provide this paired view: df -i focuses on inodes, df -h on space, du -h reports disk usage by directories (not inodes), and ls -l doesn’t reveal inode counts.