Parkin Frank - fparki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-08-23 16:27:22 +0100]:
> When sorting large files I (root) receive the following message ... When you say "large files" do you mean files greater than 2GB? Today's jargon calls files which exceed 2^31 bits large files and they take special handling in 32 bit programs. Of course 64 bit programs should handle those fine up to 2^63 bits. And does that also imply that you don't get that error message when sorting small files? It works up to a larger file size? > /usr/local/bin/sort: cannot create temporary file: /sorttest/sortapuED: File exists Hmm... Normally sort will call mkstemp() with a default temporary directory set it /tmp/sortXXXXXX. I assume you are overriding the temporary directory and placing it in /sorttest/? > I have tried various command combinations with different temporary areas > (all 777 perm). > > Compaq sort and syncsort are working correctly on the same system. > > Can you help? There are several possible problems. We need to determine several things to move forward. 1. The exact version of sort you are using. 'sort --version' 2. Is GNU sort on True64 compiled as a 32-bit program or a 64-bit program? 3. The size of the file you are trying to sort. 'ls -l' 4. The size and number of the temporary files being generated. Can you run 'ls -l' on the temporary directory while this is running and catch the size of the files there in process? Also, are there a lot of them or just one or just none? This is tricky to do since when sort exits it will clean everything up and remove those files. You have to catch it in motion. 5. The amount of physical ram on your system in round numbers. The temporary file size is related to the amount of memory that the sort program thinks is available. On some systems it can't tell and has to guess. If it has to guess then it guesses very conservatively in terms of memory but that means that it uses more disk space and therefore has a longer run time. The guess size IIRC is 8MB and when sorting a big files can create a lot of temporaries. Instead of not being able to create a temporary file you might be actually running out of temporary files. Just a guess and more information will be needed to tell for sure. Bob _______________________________________________ Bug-textutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-textutils
