HP-UX

Hi,

One of our script is executing following "sort" command.

/bin/sort $delimiter $key $originalFile -o $newFile

and while executing this, we are getting the following error:

sort: A write error occurred while merging.

While reading about this I come to know this is because of insufficient size in TMP directory, but as I am not a unix guy, I don't know which TMP directory "sort" is using and what is the maximum size allocated to that directory.

Please help me for the same.

Thanks,
Manu

Moderator's Comments:

Please use next time code tags for your code and data

On an HP system there is big chance (99% ? ) it be /tmp...
You did not say OS version platform nor size of files you are trying to merge...

1.25 GB of file having 13,500,000 lines.
Unix version: HP-UX B.11.23

Regards,
Manu

It will be /var/tmp by default unless you have $TMPDIR set.
See man sort and the "-T" parameter regarding how to change it. You could need three times the size of the original file for work space.

Use the bdf command to find out where you have some free space.

I executed echo $TMPDIR

I didn't see any result. What it mean? that default temp directory (/var/tmp or /tmp) is being used.

Can you tell me how to set this parameter to use some other directory as temporary directory.

Thanks.

---------- Post updated at 11:53 PM ---------- Previous update was at 11:47 PM ----------

Is export TMPDIR=/tmpdump the correct way to set this environment variable?

If you see no result, that means its not set, yes.

That will work on some systems but not others. The proper way to do it, the way which works everywhere, would be:

Code:

TMPDIR=/tmpdump
export TMPDIR

Yes, if $TMPDIR is not set the "sort" command will use "/var/tmp" then "/tmp".
Will work on HP-UX in "sh" (i.e. the default for the "root" account) or "ksh".