Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!elroy!gryphon!turnkey!jack
From: jack@turnkey.TCC.COM (Jack F. Vogel)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: Huge directories in XENIX
Message-ID: <6338@turnkey.TCC.COM>
Date: 23 Mar 89 15:50:43 GMT
References: <118947@neabbs.UUCP>
Reply-To: jack@turnkey.TCC.COM
Organization: Turnkey Computer Consultants, Westchester, CA
Lines: 41

In article <118947@neabbs.UUCP> richard@neabbs.UUCP (RICHARD RONTELTAP) writes:
>" Huge directory < /bbs/files/ibm >--call administrator "
>
>The is the friendly message that greets me, I use du, find, or tar on
>the directory mentioned above.
>The directory is indeed pretty big, once there were over 2K files in it,
>which means the directory file is now over 32K bytes.
>
.....
>Wrong! tar doesn't work anymore. It repetetively backs up the same files of
>the 'huge' directory.
>--- WHY??
 
I do not recall precisely where the directory limitation lies, I suspect you
are correct about it being in a library call, I suppose I could take the time
to look it up but don't think it would be useful to you anyway. After all is
2k files in a directory reasonable, that's why we have directory trees. I
also thought it worthwhile to point out that this is not a Xenix specific 
problem. I have seen it in AIX and I suspect the same limitation is general
SysV.

Do not lose hope, however. For I believe you should still be able to back up
the directory. You do not say how you invoke tar, but if you do it by going
into that directory and saying "tar cvf /dev/rct0 *" it will fail since the
shell expansion of the asterick will fail. What did work with AIX and thus
should here is the following:

		find . -print | xargs tar uvf /dev/rct0

Find will still give you the message about the huge directory, but this did
not stop it from working. I have not tested this with SCO so I would be
interested in hearing about your success or failure.

					Good luck,


-- 
Jack F. Vogel
Turnkey Computer Consultants, Westchester,CA
UUCP: ...{nosc|uunet|gryphon}!turnkey!jack 
Internet: jack@turnkey.TCC.COM || lcc!jackv@CS.UCLA.EDU