Re: error on large directories

[Morgan Burke]

Please disregard this message - I just discovered that the problem was due to 
a particular directory configuration on my server.  The repository was on an 
NFS partition, which makes it much less surprising that it chokes on large
directories.  It seems to work fine if the filesystem is local.

-- Morgan Burke
   morgan@sitka.triumf.ca



> Hello,
> 
> I've been plagued for some time by a problem reading large directories 
> with CVS.  I have a repository that functions as a database, so it contains
> close to 7500 files in 4 directories (1 dir, plus 3 subdirs), totalling
> over 700MB and growing.  CVS is used to mirror this database, and to 
> extract snapshots as of particular dates.
> 
> Under Linux (RH7.3, CVS 1.11.1p1 and 1.11.5), executing "cvs update" on 
> this repository generates four error messages (one for each 
> directory, I presume):  "cvs update: error reading current directory: 
> Value too large for defined data type"
> 
> My guess is that the buffer to read directory info into is not large enough.
> "strace cvs update ." shows the following line just before one of these 
> error messages:
> 
> getdents64(0x7, 0x818b428, 0x1000, 0)   = 4072
> 
> which I take to mean that it is passing a 4K buffer for dirents64() to 
> fill with directory data.  Unfortunately getdents64 is not called directly
> by the CVS code, so it's hard for me to pinpoint where the call occurs.
> I don't know if the 4K buffer size is meant to correspond to the normal 
> Linux directory size of 4K, but FWIW, this particular directory is much 
> larger:
> 
> etc$ ls -ld caldb
> drwxrwxr-x    6 e949mgr  dev         86016 May 12 14:09 caldb
> 
> 
> This repository is hosted on an SGI server, and is mirrored on other
> SGI servers that have no problems performing the same update, so the 
> bug appears to be Linux-specific.
> 
> 
> I surfed the source looking for something that might control the 
> directory read buffer size, but nothing obvious jumped out at me.  I also 
> looked for the src/options.h file, as recommended by the INSTALL file,
> but it doesn't appear to exist.
> 
> Any other suggestions?
> 
> -- Morgan Burke
>    morgan@sitka.triumf.ca
> 
>