what' wrong with my system!

[leyearn]

# su - nvlocal
/etc/profile[83]: /usr/bin/stty: arg list too long
/etc/profile[92]: /usr/bin/cat: arg list too long
/etc/profile[105]: /usr/bin/mail: arg list too long
/etc/profile[113]: /usr/bin/news: arg list too long
$ ls
ksh: /usr/bin/ls: arg list too long

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi,

I'd say you have a serious problem in your /etc/profile file.
It has to contain some serious junk.
I believe there's a "clean" profile file in /usr/newconfig/etc. Check it out & get it copied into place - IF you can get logged in.
Else you'll have to go into single-user mode.

Good Luck,
Jeff

[leyearn]

but on node1
#su - nvlocal
is ok
but on node2
# su - nvlocal
/etc/profile[83]: /usr/bin/stty: arg list too long
/etc/profile[92]: /usr/bin/cat: arg list too long
/etc/profile[105]: /usr/bin/mail: arg list too long
/etc/profile[113]: /usr/bin/news: arg list too long
${HOME:-.}/.profile[11]: /usr/bin/tset: arg list too long
${HOME:-.}/.profile[13]: /usr/bin/stty: arg list too long
${HOME:-.}/.profile[14]: /usr/bin/stty: arg list too long
${HOME:-.}/.profile[15]: /usr/bin/tabs: arg list too long

so i no node1
#rcp -p /etc/profile node2:/etc/
but it doesn't work well
the problem doesn't be resolved!

[Navin Bhat_2]

Arg list too long

You specified too many arguments for the command, or you may have
inserted an unwanted space character. Examine your command line and the
syntax for the command. Make necessary adjustments and try again. Go to individual lines and move the cursor to see where it ends.

[Dani Seely]

From what you've described and the symbols you've used to show your command line prompts, this isn't your root account that is having the problem. That's a good thing!

You may have an escape sequence or some special characters in the profile. You can try to resolve this by using 'strings /etc/profile |more' to see any special characters or weird looking strings. It appears that your profile is pretty big ... at least 113 lines. That's pretty big, so I'm betting you have some funky characters or strings in there.

To work around this rather than try to trouble shoot, save this profile and restore it from a backup (you can restore just the /etc/profile from an Ignite backup if that's the only backup you have) or you can copy one from a similar system.

Hope this helps!

[leyearn]

but the node1 doesn't have the problem
so on node1
#rcp -p /etc/profile node2:/etc/
but
#su - nvlocal
doesn't work well

[Geoff Wild]

Sounds like you need to really audit your nodes - make sure they are the same.

Something to help you audit is ccmon:

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/downloads/ccmon-service-brief.pdf

Talk to your HP Support Rep - it will cost you a couple of Technical Service days...

If you can't do that - then you need to check things by hand, look at patch levels, installed software, configuration files in /etc like services, inetd.conf, etc...kernel parameters, just to name a few....

Rgds...Geoff

[Kiyoshi Miyake]

Hi,

There is the "ttytype" command before stty (in /etc/profile[113]).
So, maybe, there is some difference "TERM" between node1 and node2.
Please try the command "echo $TERM" and "ttytype -s -a"
no node1 and node2.
Check difference.

Thanks.

[KapilRaj]

I have a hint here You /etc/profile can have a line similier to the following ...

. /apps1/scripts/menu.inc # which is only there on the problem node. not on the other ... and that script is the one who creates this problems.

Also is there a file equivalent to /etc/environment in HPUX ?

Regds,

Kaps

[pap]

Hi ,
It will be good if you can post your /etc/profile file, your .profile and your /etc/environment file.
Thanks,
-pap

[R. Allan Hicks]

I take it that node1:/etc/profile is the same as node2:/etc/profile?

The number is the line number of the script that the shell has issue with.

What is on lines 83,92,105 and 113. In particular look at 83 and be aware that the problem could be somewere in lines 1 - 82 as well.

If the profiles are identical, check the environment. Not haveing an environment variable on the other node could cause a cascading failure

[Duncan Edmonstone]

The fact that you get the *same* problem after the su completes and you type 'ls' suggests that the problem isn't with /etc/profile, but rather with the shell... Do you get the same problem if you do:

su nvlocal -c "/usr/bin/ksh"
ls

What is specified for the shell in the /etc/passwd file - no corruptions there?

Is /usr/bin/ksh the same on both systems (size/cksum)

HTH

Duncan

[Kent Ostby]

What about nvlocal's .profile.

You're focused on /etc/profile which is system wide, but the problem is with a particular user.

I would make a back up copy of this user's profile and then copy another users here and see what happens.

Another thought is that you could post .profile for the nvlocal's user and we could take a look at it.

usually when I have trouble with .profile's its because I left out a quote or something.

[Mike Stroyan]

I expect that you have a really really large environment variable. The exec command has a limit on the total size of the arguments and evironment variables. Your environment variables must be too large even when you pass no arguments at all.

The limit is 20478 characters on an unpatched 10.20 system and 2048000 characters on an 11.x system. You can check the limit with "getconf ARG_MAX". If you have 10.20 you can increase the limit by installing patch PHKL_16751 and setting the kernel parameter "large_ncargs_enabled=1".

[Fred Ruffet]

Duncan seems right to me : This doesn't seem to be a profile problem. Could you tell what shell is affected to nvlocal ?
send output for
grep nvlocal /etc/passwd
As long as shell is the last arg on the line, see if there are no trailing space or non-printable characters.

Regards,

Fred

[leyearn]

I created a user named hp with default settings
when i
#su - hp
the same phenomenon appeared
# su - hp
/etc/profile[83]: /usr/bin/stty: arg list too long
/etc/profile[92]: /usr/bin/cat: arg list too long
/etc/profile[105]: /usr/bin/mail: arg list too long
/etc/profile[113]: /usr/bin/news: arg list too long
${HOME:-.}/.profile[11]: /usr/bin/tset: arg list too long
${HOME:-.}/.profile[13]: /usr/bin/stty: arg list too long
${HOME:-.}/.profile[14]: /usr/bin/stty: arg list too long
${HOME:-.}/.profile[15]: /usr/bin/tabs: arg list too long


I think it seems have something wrong with the system itself
is there need patch it?

[leyearn]

the shell for nvlocal and hp is /usr/bin/ksh
I also found that if the shell was /usr/bin/sh ,su - nvlocal command ok

[Dani Seely]

Do an ls -l of your shells (/usr/bin/ksh and /usr/bin/sh) and post the results so we can see the file permissions, ownership, and size. Could be that you have an infected shell.

[leyearn]

-r-xr-xr-x 1 bin bin 24576 Nov 14 2000 autopush
-r-sr-xr-x 5 root bin 45056 Nov 14 2000 chsh
-r-xr-xr-x 1 bin bin 151552 Nov 14 2000 csh
-r-xr-xr-x 1 bin bin 152 Nov 14 2000 hash
-r-xr-xr-x 1 bin bin 245760 Nov 14 2000 keysh
-r-xr-xr-x 2 bin bin 151552 Nov 14 2000 ksh
-r-sr-xr-x 1 root bin 28672 Nov 14 2000 remsh
-r-xr-xr-x 2 bin bin 151552 Nov 14 2000 rksh
-r-xr-xr-x 2 bin bin 204800 Nov 14 2000 rsh
-r-xr-xr-x 2 bin bin 204800 Nov 14 2000 sh

[Dani Seely]

Hello,
I assume this is your first experience on the ITRC forum as you did not award points to the forumers for the answers you were provided. May I suggest that you take a look at the following link to learn about the points system in use here. Thanks.

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/helptips.do?#28

Please read the article, assess the assistance you were provided by the forumers, then reward them. Thanks!

[Fred Ruffet]

if it works with sh, not with ksh, it might be a problem with the .kshrc file. Could you post a copy of it ? Could you also post a copy of the file pointed by the $ENV variable ?

Regards,

Fred

[V. Nyga]

Hi,

- problem only at node 2 - is the Home-directory nfs-mounted?
Can you do a ls -l in the home-dir?

Volkmar

[Dave Hutton]

I found this:
Arg list too long

You specified too many arguments for the command, or you may have
inserted an unwanted space character. Examine your command line and the
syntax for the command. Make necessary adjustments and try again.


May want to verify even if your profile looks correctly. There maybe an extra space in there some where.

The only other time I've seen this is where you have a slew of files in a directory and you try to do a command like rm *.txt and theres thousands of files. I'm assuming this persons home directory is pretty much empty except for the standard env files.

Dave