Q- fix for 4.2A "Arg list too long." from /bin progs?

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Article #7328

#7328

From: Dan Mosedale
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 22:43

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If you use programs from /bin (e.g. ls, chmod, egrep, rm, etc) with a
wildcard in a big directory, they barf with "Arg list too long."

For example:

    hostname 232 >  /bin/ls /big_directory/*
    /bin/ls: Arg list too long.

I thought that perhaps this was simply a problem with the various
programs, so I grabbed the GNU fileutils and compiled them.  Same
problem, same error message.  However, I looked at the GNU sources and
saw no such error message.  

Then, doing a strings on /bin/libc.a shows that here lives the error
message.  So presumably, someone is getting an errno of E2BIG and
doing a perror().

Does anyone know how to tweak the kernel and/or do a binary patch to
libc.a to increase the allowed arglist size?

Thanks,

Dan Mosedale
mosedale@genome.stanford.edu

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From: mosedale@fafner.stanford.edu (Dan Mosedale)
Subject: Q- fix for 4.2A "Arg list too long." from /bin progs?
Message-ID: <1993Jan28.224308.9344@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: news@leland.Stanford.EDU (Mr News)
Organization: Stanford Yeast Genome Project
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 93 22:43:08 GMT
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