issue opening large file on Itanium 11.23

[Nyck_1]

when attempting to open a 6GB file using vi on my rx6600 I'm getting the following error message:-

"NotificationLog.log.bak" Value too large to be stored in data type"

Have you any ideas how I open such a large file?

[Deepak Kulkarni]

Hi,

Can you please try opening the file and in the same time please run the "vmstat 1" in another terminal. Please provide me the output.



Regards
DK

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi,

Try this;
# bdf
search for a large filesystem with enough free space

# vi
set dir=/your_large_filesystem
:e /your_large_file

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[Dennis Handly · Accepted solution]

>open a 6GB file using vi

This will take forever if you try this.
I don't know if vim works better.
If you want to just look at it, try more(1).

What are you really trying to do?
If you are really trying to edit that file, you might have to use split(1), edit a few files then cat(1) to put them together.

>Deepak: Can you please try opening the file and ... run the "vmstat 1"

Why will this work? The error message says that vi doesn't know how to handle large files because a human would be silly to wait that long.

[Nyck_1]

The file system I'm trying to open this on is as follows:-

bdf .
Filesystem kbytes used avail %used Mounted on
/dev/vg00/lvol4 31457280 6722320 24541800 22% /home


There is 24GB of free space so that should not be an issue.

I have actually told him to use more or ftp it to windoze and use word.

Somewhere I read on the interweb mentioned a particular patch which would resolve this kind of thing. Might call HP and see what they say.

[Dennis Handly]

>I have actually told him to use more

Yes, using tusc indicates more(1) will work.
But not vi, even on 11.31.

>a particular patch which would resolve this kind of thing.

I see no evidence of O_LARGE.

[Deepak Kulkarni]

Hi Dennis,

I faced before this issue. This is mainly due to Memory I feel. If sufficient memory is not available the file will not be opened.

I wanted to check the MEMORY-> FREE behaviour in vmstat command output.

Regards
DK

[Dennis Handly]

>DK: This is mainly due to Memory I feel. If sufficient memory is not available the file will not be opened.

No, you can't open(2), creat(2) nor stat(2) the file unless you use the proper large file functions.

That's what "Value too large to be stored in data type" means.

Of course once you get past the wrong functions, you need to have enough memory OR you need to have a disk based editor.
Which means fixing wrong editing algorithms.