Weird Filesystem Behavior

[Chapter11]

AIX 4.3.3, ML08 or 09, I forget which.

I have an LFE-enabled filesystem that's about 120G in size (it's a scratch area for some data exports).

Within that filesystem is a directory and file structure of many thousands of directories and files.

At a certain directory level, I am trying to create a tarfile of each directory. The resulting tarfiles will each contain thousands of directories and files, and are organized such that no expected (or resulting) tarfile exceed 2G in length.

I am using a script to run the series of tars on each directory.

During the execution of my script, things run well for a while, but eventually I'll end up with a long string of "There is not enough memory available now." and no more data is written to any tarfile.

When this happens, it becomes next to impossible to run any other scripts on the machine, presumably because the other noted effect of no new file created can exceed 32k in size (that's not a typo).

unmounting and remounting the filesystem seems to clear up this misbehavior, but eventually I run into it again.

Thoughts?

 

[flatwater]

It could be because of an incorrect block size and probably has nothing to do with physical memory.

 

[Chapter11]

6 gigs ram, 4 gigs paging.

topas shows the follow (during a successful run):
max comp: 53%
max noncomp: 47%

max paging % used: 1.5%

If it were really a memory issue, that would exhibit on the machine's other application (Oracle)

 

[rathiadhithi]

A small check may be needed

Will tar supports files that are morethatn 2 gb in size?
I don't think so. You are taking bakup of LFS. Probably it contains Big files. Check it out.

 

[Chapter11]

I can guarantee that no data I'm trying to create a tarfile for exceeds 2G on a per-file basis, or should result in a tarfile that exceeds 2G. The issue of tar not supporting >2G was already known and planned for prior to beginning this project.