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

* Bob Proulx wrote on Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 09:56:08PM CEST:
> 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.

Mine is from Debian testing or unstable.

> > $ 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...

Oh, I might not be running the latest glibc.  And I don't consider this
a serious bug, either.  But it may cause libtool to run slower than
necessary (as it believes getconf).

> > but apparently it doesn't exist any more:

> You say "apparently" but I am sure that it was you posted a note
> elsewhere noting this change in the upstream kernel.

Yep, just checking whether you were paying attention.  ;-)

> 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. :-)

Sure.  But you can also spread the word now, maybe that will cause it to
propagate faster!

Cheers,
Ralf