ls "Not Enough Memory"

[dial8d]

Heres the story.

I have inherited an AIX 5.1 ML5 server, which has a filesystem which has a huge number of small files within it .

I want to create a list of the files, so i can see what they are, for deletion/archiving etc.

However, attempts to run ls against this filesystem are failing,

myserver:/directory# ls | wc -l
ls: 0653-340 There is not enough memory available now.
0

The server has 3gb physical, and 2gb paging space.

size inuse free pin virtual
memory 786415 753658 32757 185444 273898
pg space 524288 144963


I figured the problem is probably limits related, and have tried setting various different limits for rss but to no avail.

myserver:/# ulimit -a
time(seconds) unlimited
file(blocks) unlimited
data(kbytes) 131072
stack(kbytes) 32768
memory(kbytes) 32768
coredump(blocks) 2097151
nofiles(descriptors) 2000

section of /etc/security/limits

default:
fsize = 2097151
core = 2097151
cpu = -1
data = 262144
rss = 65536
stack = 65536
nofiles = 2000

root:
fsize = -1

Any ideas what else i can try ?

 

[mrn]

Add the line

rss = unlimited to the root stanza in /etc/security/limits

Mike

"A foolproof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble, then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant."

http://www.airport-parking-site.co.uk/

 

[mrn]

BTW is the filesystem a nfs mount?

Mike

"A foolproof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble, then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant."

http://www.airport-parking-site.co.uk/

 

[mrn]

Also what's the maintenance level?

oslevel -r



Mike

"A foolproof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble, then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant."

http://www.airport-parking-site.co.uk/

 

[dial8d]

It is local filesystem, but is NFS shared.

Just tried setting rss to unlimited by running

chsec -f /etc/security/limits -s root -a rss=-1

set successfully in limits

root:
fsize = -1
rss = -1

But problem remains ;

myserver:/mydirectory# ls | wc -l
ls: 0653-340 There is not enough memory available now.
0

The filesystem is locally mounted, but is NFS shared.

 

[dial8d]

i stand corrected, its ML06

5100-06

 

[p5wizard]

Perhaps find has a way with dealing with this directory?

find /mydirectory | wc -l

Also, find out if your 'ls' is not an alias to e.g. 'ls -ltr', that would consume a lot of memory on a huge dir...

Type

alias|grep ls

to find out.


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[dial8d]

Ah, i may have found a way to work round it.

Im using find with ls to redirect output into a file, which i should be able read.

find . -type f -exec ls -lrt {} \; > /files.txt

Seems to be ticking along ok.

 

[p5wizard]

If you are hoping to get a list of files, sorted by age, no can do with a

find . -exec ls -lrt {} \;

this will just do an ls -l for every file found under the current dir, in the order that "find" finds the files.



Oh, and the shortcut

find . -ls

would do about the same, but without invoking the ls command for every file found. (Roughly amounts to ls -filds filename)


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[mrn]

There is an apar available for a simular error, it may be worth applying

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docvie...90&uid=isg1IY44190&loc=en_US&cs=utf-8&lang=en

Mike

"A foolproof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble, then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant."

http://www.airport-parking-site.co.uk/

 

[dial8d]

Hi p5

yes, 'find . -ls' seems much more efficient, and gives me all i need.

Thanks for your responses guys !

 

[hfaix]

What does "svmon -G" show?