Can't copy HUGE size GB file into a newly created partition

[berenger aguissi]

Hi,

I have newly configured a new disk with a 50 GB partition ADVFS.
The partition is accessible and I can copy files with smaller size into it.
But none of my database files around 6 GB of size could get copied into the partition.

Please help !

Regards.
Berenger.

[Han Pilmeyer]

More detailed information would help to determine what is going on (such as version details, error message, command used, etc.)

BTW. 50 GB is not huge any more. Most current disks are much larger than this.

[Ivan Ferreira]

What is the error that you are getting?

[berenger aguissi]

Hi,

Thanks for your prompt reply.

I am using tru64 unix 5.1b
I am copying a directory tree into the partition. It doesn't give any error message, but the process pends (or hang if I could say so) for several hours.
When I open the directory mounted on the partition through another terminal, I realise that only some few directories with small size files were copied.

What should I do ?


Regards.
Berenger.

[Han Pilmeyer]

You should provide more details...

What's the command?

Is the system busy when the command appears "hung"? i.e. look at disk activity, CPU activity, etc.

When you consider the files that have been copied, can you estimate what file it is working on now and is there anything special about that file?

If you have lsof, you can use it on the command you use to see what files it has open.

You could attach to the command in question using the dbx debugger and do a couple of "t" commands to see where it is spending it's time.

Anything in the console / binary error log? Could be that the new disk is just flakey.

[Ivan Ferreira]

It may be a disk problem. Try doing dd of a big file to the new partition:

time dd if=/dev/zero of=/path/to/mount/point bs=1024 count=10000000

Verify with ls that the file is growing.

[Keith Moodie]

Thoughts:
* Check that there isn't a quota that is limiting the space you can use.

* do a df -k to check your partition is actually 50 GB

* your 'hang fror hours' sonds like the files are being copied, perhaps there is something about the directory structure that results in them going into a different dirtectory to where you expect them to be. Try a ls -lR | less and look/search for them

* check that the command you are using isn't an alias that only copies smaller files.

* Try copying the large files one at a time.

[Hein van den Heuvel]

I like the idea of just copying 50 (or 49.9) GB to the partition from /dev/zero in 1MB chunks (1024k) with dd. THen if/when it hangs you can abort with ^C and dd will tell you where is got stuck (if it did not error out earlier).

Is this a cluster?

Could there be a large, sparse file in the source that is being 'exploded' for the copy?

Try dump | vrestore instead of cp ?

fwiw,
Hein.