Re: File Limit in Kernel?

Mark Mielke (mark@mark.mielke.cc)
Tue, 12 Nov 2002 11:26:27 -0500

On Tue, Nov 12, 2002 at 11:01:49AM -0500, Kent Borg wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 12, 2002 at 10:38:55AM -0500, Adam Voigt wrote:
> > I have a directory with 39,000 files in it, and I'm trying to use the cp
> > command to copy them into another directory,
> > [...]
> > "argument list too long"
> No, it is not a kernel limit, it is a limit to your shell (bash, for
> example). Look at xargs to get around it.

E2BIG The argument list is too big.

_SC_ARG_MAX
The maximum length of the arguments to the exec()
family of functions; the corresponding macro is
ARG_MAX.

On my RedHat 8.0 box:

$ getconf ARG_MAX
131072

It is definately a kernel limitation, although as other people have
pointed out, there are common userspace solutions to the problem.

mark

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