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.
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rmm(1) General Commands Manual rmm(1)
NAME
rmm - remove messages (only available within the message handling system, mh)
SYNOPSIS
rmm [+folder] [msgs] [-help]
OPTIONS
Prints a list of the valid options to this command.
The default settings for this command are:
+folder defaults to the current folder msgs defaults to the current message
DESCRIPTION
The rmm command deletes the current message from the current folder.
You can specify messages and folders other than the current ones by using the +folder and msgs arguments.
The current message is not changed by rmm, so a next will advance to the next message in the folder as expected.
If you have defined a component rmmproc: in your file, then instead of simply renaming the message file, rmm will call the named program to
delete the file.
The rmm command removes messages by renaming the message files with a preceding comma. Many sites consider files that start with a comma to
be a temporary backup, and arrange for cron(8) to remove such files once a day.
PROFILE COMPONENTS
Path: To determine your Mail directory
rmmproc: Program to delete the message
FILES
The user profile.
SEE ALSO
rmf(1)
rmm(1)