pax : Path name element too long - skipped

[Jan de Haas_3]

Hi all,

Does anyone know a solution to the above error message coming from pax?

I am making an Ignite tape and getting these messages. Cause seems to be quite straightforward, but I am wondering if someone knows a workable solution.

Yes... the paths we are using are quite long and I am not able to shorten them (not without being seriously beaten up by our dev team).

Thanks,
Jan.

[RAC_1]

Latest pax patches. May be they have something, else only options seems to be shotening th path length.

[Jan de Haas_3]

Applied the latest pax patch already...

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

The development team should check out the POSIX standards for pathnames. Here's a sample question/answer:

http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-1-90_int/pasc-1003.1-30.html

The pax man page in HP-UX does not comment on the tar and cpio format limitations for pathnames, but as pax conforms to POSIX standards, pathnames are limited. In some man pages for pax, 100 and 200 character limits are mentioned in conjunction with tar and cpio limits.

I would strongly recommend that the developers check out the getconf parameters such as PATH_MAX and POSIX_PATH_MAX and then either adjust paths to stay within the standards, or move the long directory paths in another volume. Ignite/UX is designed for VG00 backup and while additional volumes could be specified, the tool is not a backup tool but a DRP tool so just enough to restore the boot disk should be the goal.

[Sameer_Nirmal]

Hi,

I guess you need to cut short the pathnames to avoid this error. There is no work around to my knowledge.

As per the "pax" man page it uses by default "ustar" format for archive. But there is no mention of max characters in a pathname for "ustar". Saying that there has to be an internal limitation in the header structure for pathname characters with "ustar" format like "tar" does.
"tar" has <256 limitation.
The archive format could be choosen as "cpio" which uses the PATH_MAX limit for pathname characters. But I am not sure if "cpio" archive could be used for recovery. "cpio" has 1023 (maybe more) characters limitation.

To know the limitation of "ustar", one has to do trick with pathname characters on a test box.

[Arunvijai_4]

Hi Jan,

Just to check, do you have PHCO_32438 (pax cumulative patch) installed ?

-Arun

[Jan de Haas_3]

Think I will just exclude the dirs that are giving the problems and restore those from the 'regular backup' if we need to Ignite this system.

Thanks for your input on this.

Cheers,

Jan.