No inodes available

I have no available inodes on my system, and I am getting " no space available on device" errors, even though df reports 5GB space free.

My question is this: do sym-links use inodes? Under usr/bin, there are 45 X11 sub-folders that are all sym-links back to /usr/bin. Could these be using up all my inodes? And can I delete all the 45 sym-linked Folders, since they are exact duplicates of each other? Each Folder reports 1905 files in each.

Thanks for any info...

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5449

Although I realize the need for specific OS info, etc. to troubleshoot, I am asking a generic Linux design question. Whether I have some specific graphics card should have no bearing on what the underlying OS is doing with my filesystem.

Does anyone have info on inodes and how they are used in Zorin to manage files???

Thanks!!!

Ok, just being a GNU/Linux desktop user, no, I don't know!

https://www.ivankuznetsov.com/2010/02/n ... nodes.html
maybe this will help you?

Yes, I saw that page. Unfortunately, deleting files seems to require tmp space, which I don't have, because all inodes are used. It seems to be a catch-22 -no inodes to create files, but no inodes to delete them either!!
Is there another command to actually delete files, besides rm?? I thought I read about a shred command??

rsync -a --delete ?