Re: File Limit in Kernel?

From: Mark Mielke (mark@mark.mielke.cc)
Date: Tue Nov 12 2002 - 11:26:27 EST

On Tue, Nov 12, 2002 at 11:01:49AM -0500, Kent Borg wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 12, 2002 at 10:38:55AM -0500, Adam Voigt wrote:
> > I have a directory with 39,000 files in it, and I'm trying to use the cp
> > command to copy them into another directory,
> > [...]
> > "argument list too long"
> No, it is not a kernel limit, it is a limit to your shell (bash, for
> example). Look at xargs to get around it.

>From "man execve":

       E2BIG The argument list is too big.

>From "man sysconf":

       _SC_ARG_MAX
              The maximum length of the arguments to the exec()
              family of functions; the corresponding macro is
              ARG_MAX.

On my RedHat 8.0 box:

       $ getconf ARG_MAX
       131072

It is definately a kernel limitation, although as other people have
pointed out, there are common userspace solutions to the problem.

mark 

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Nov 15 2002 - 22:00:26 EST