Re: Command failure: Too Many Files (rm, ls, tar)

[Bob Proulx]

Hi Ralf,

Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> AFAIK this limitation has been lifted in Linux 2.6.23.  That FAQ could
> be updated for this.

Do you know which distributions have shipped with this or newer
kernel?  I was holding off mostly because I think it is only
from-scratch builders that have that newest kernels that will see this
new behavior.

> On my 2.6.24, the non-limit isn't shown:
> 
> $ getconf ARG_MAX
> 131072

I think this is a bug in glibc on kernels without a hard limit.
(However it may be a lessor of two evils it if avoids breakage of some
programs that always expect a limit.)  I wonder if libc tries to
dynamically detect this or if there is a hard coded value that needs
to be updated.  Hmm...

> but apparently it doesn't exist any more:
> 
> $ cd /usr/lib; /bin/echo * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * | 
> wc
>       1   60950 1056000

You say "apparently" but I am sure that it was you posted a note
elsewhere noting this change in the upstream kernel.  I followed your
reference to where it was committed into Linus' kernel tree here:

  
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=b6a2fea39318e43fee84fa7b0b90d68bed92d2ba

It is only a matter of time before this propagates.  But time is also
what keeps everything from happening all at once and so we will need
to wait a bit before this shows up on most machines in the wild. :-)

Bob