Re: fileutils-4.1: du reports wrong size on large files

[Bob Proulx]

Thanks for the report.

> I'm trying to use gnu du, which is installed as gdu on our systems, to
> avoid hiding the system du command.  The system version deals happily
> with large files (> 4GB) but the gnu version does something strange.

Because of the difference that occurs at when accessing large files I
am guessing that some misconfiguration occurred when the GNU software
was compiled onto your system.  I personally maintain a large number
of HP-UX systems both 10.20 and 11.0 for work and I do not see the
behavior you describe.  A stock version of the GNU fileutils compiles
cleanly using the native hpux C compiler.

Do you know with what compiler, HP native, GNU 3.x, etc. that your
version was compiled under?  And also if it was compiled on hpux 11.0
or hpux 10.20, etc.

> But on big files:
> 
>   hpux> ls -l
>   -rw-r--r--   1 eldridge   users      5881824079 Jan 31 13:26 bigfile.bin
>   hpux> du -k bigfile.bin
>   5743969 bigfile.bin
>   hpux> gdu -k bigfile.bin
>   717997  bigfile.bin

Here is what I see on a large file on hpux.  Note that this happens to
exist on an NFS server using NFSpv3 showing this even works with NFS.

  ls -ld gds
  -rw-rw-r--    1 rwp     users      7187496960 Nov 10 01:08 gds
  du -sh gds
  6.7G    gds
  /usr/bin/du -k gds
  7019040 gds
  /opt/local/bin/du -k gds
  7019048 gds
  /opt/local/bin/du --version
  du (fileutils) 4.1.5

If possible I suggest that you pull the latest sources yourself and
compile them.  Look closely at the configure output and report any
unexpected errors.  As one possible debugging technique I could
provide the binary for du on hpux that I am using and works for me.
If it works for you too then it is more clearly a configuration
problem.

Bob