Login or Register to Ask a Question and Join Our Community

Sponsored Content
Full Discussion: cp command not working
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting cp command not working Post 302397316 by Geekasaurus on Sunday 21st of February 2010 08:12:19 PM
Old 02-21-2010
The cp command
The cp command does not work for directories with large number of files in them. I don't know what the upper limit is; I could probably find out with a lot of research. Also, the mv and rm commands do not work either under the same circumstance.

I suspect that the upper limit of the number of files that it can work on is 65536. I know that it is greater than 10,000 and less than 100,000. The 65536 is a SWAG number based on 26 years of Unix shell-scripting experience.

A number of years ago, our data warehouse people left more than 4194304 million small files in a single directory. I don't know exactly how many, but they used the entire inode table and its size was set at 4194304 per filesystem (hpux 11.0). I had to reboot the system from CDROM, alter the boot parameters and mount the offending filesystem to the RAM image. Only then could I descend the directory tree and find the overfilled directory. As the OP said, the cp command does not work on directories with that many entries in it. Neither do the rm or mv commands.

I cleaned up the filesystem by removing files. I had to use a for-do-done loop and remove only one file at a time; this took many hours.

The shell being used does not matter. Neither does the OS (particularly). It is the same cp command (or rm, or mv) regardless of the shell.

The tar syntax I quoted is in the man page on my AIX box. I've been using something similar to it for more than 20 years. It works.
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Solaris

last command not working

I have a Solaris 8 Ultra 1 on my network that we use as a utility server. The last command, which looks in the /var/adm/wtmpx file, is not working. When I do a last, the latest entry is dated June 3, but the /var/adm/wtmpx file is dated whenever a login is successful (verified by typing a... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: antalexi
3 Replies

2. Solaris

ls command not working

Hi, I have installed opensolaris 10 in VMware. Everything is fine except ls command is not working. It is not displaying any files and directories. Sorry if the question is soo trivial. (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: mayahari
8 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

Here command not working

The below is a simple script, but doesnt work. #!/bin/ksh cat <<XYZ -h help -T Test (required) -D Develop (required) XYZ Help is appreciated (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: pinnacle
5 Replies

4. UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

command for recently modified files - "find" command not working

I have three files a.txt , b.txt , c.txt in a directory called my_dir1 .These files were created before two or three months . I have a tar file called my_tar1.tar which contains three files a.txt , b.txt , d.txt . Somebody untarred the my_tar1.tar into my_dir1 directory. So existing two files were... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: joe.mani
1 Replies

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

Need help! command working ok when executed in command line, but fails when run inside a script!

Hi everyone, when executing this command in unix: echo "WM7 Fatal Alerts:", $(cat query1.txt) > a.csvIt works fine, but running this command in a shell script gives an error saying that there's a syntax error. here is content of my script: tdbsrvr$ vi hc.sh "hc.sh" 22 lines, 509... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: 4dirk1
4 Replies

6. Shell Programming and Scripting

help with shell script: cp command not working, but mv command works...

Hello. I would like to ask your help regarding the cp command. We are using a cp command to create a back-up copy of our file but to no avail. It's just not working. We already checked the file and directory permissions and all seems correct. We have a script (ftp.script) which calls on... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: udelalv
1 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

Working of command

What does the command do lpr -Pqpr *.jpg do ? (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: Nabeel Nazir
1 Replies

8. Shell Programming and Scripting

Maxdepth command not working in AIX.Need alternative solution for this command

Hi All, I am trying to select 30 days older files under current directory ,but not from subdirectory using below command. find <Dir> -type f -mtime + 30 This command selecting all the files from current directory and also from sub directory . I read some documention through internet ,... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: kommineni
1 Replies

9. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Shell script not working but command works in command prompt

Hi everyone I have a problem with my script If I try directly this command /usr/bin/nice -n 19 mysqldump -u root --password="******" wiki_schneider -c | nice -n 19 gzip -9 > /point_de_montage/$(date '+%Y%m%d')-wiki-db.sql.gz It works But if I simply add this command in a script and... (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: picemma
8 Replies

10. Shell Programming and Scripting

Execute ssh command with additional terminal command to any remote user not working script

Hello i am having an issue with bash script and this is the code now=$(cat hosts1.txt | awk '{print $2;}') while read n ;do ssh root@$now 'useradd test1; echo -e "test1\ntest1" | passwd test1 && echo "test1 ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL" >> /etc/sudoers' When i execute only part with cat, it... (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: tomislav91
8 Replies

LEARN ABOUT ULTRIX

mhpath

mhpath(1mh)															       mhpath(1mh)

Name
       mhpath - print full pathnames of MH messages and folders

Syntax
       mhpath [ +foldername ] [ msgs ] [ -help ]

Description
       Use the command to display the full pathname of the specified folder.  If you do not specify a folder, displays the pathname of the current
       folder.

       If you specify a message with its message number, displays the pathname of the specified message.  You can also specify a  number  of  mes-
       sages,  or  a range of messages.  If the top of the range that you specify is greater than the last message in the folder, displays as much
       of the specified range as possible.

       Additionally can take a keyword or a sequence name.  The following keywords are acceptable:

       first	 The first message in the folder.

       last	 The last message in the folder.

       new	 The message after the last message in the folder.  You cannot use new as part of a message range.

       cur	 The current message in the folder.

       prev	 The message before the current message.

       next	 The message after the current message.

       all	 All of the messages in the folder.

Options
       -help	 Prints a list of the valid options to this command.

Examples
       In the following example, displays message 3 in the folder
       % mhpath +inbox 3
       /r/phyl/Mail/inbox

       The following example displays the pathname of messages 2 to 5 in the current folder:
       % mhpath 2-5
       /r/phyl/Mail/inbox/2
       /r/phyl/Mail/inbox/3
       /r/phyl/Mail/inbox/4
       /r/phyl/Mail/inbox/5

Profile Components
       Path:   To determine your Mail directory

Files
       The user profile.

See Also
       folder(1mh)

																       mhpath(1mh)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 10:28 AM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy