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From: Barry Kelly <bkelly.ie@gmail.com>
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Subject: "du -b --files0-from=-" running out of memory
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 13:24:03 +0000
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I have a problem with du running out of memory.

I'm feeding it a list of null-separated file names via standard input,
to a command-line that looks like:

  du -b --files0-from=-

The problem is that when du is run in this way, it leaks memory like a
sieve. I feed it about 4.7 million paths but eventually it falls over as
it hits the 32-bit address space limit.

Now, I can understand why a du -c might want to exclude excess hard
links to files, but that at most requires a hash table for device &
inode pairs - it's hard to see why 4.7 million entries would cause OOM -
and in any case, I'm not asking for a grand total.

Is there any other alternative to running e.g. xargs -0 du -b, possibly
with a high -n <arg> to xargs to limit memory leakage?

-- Barry

-- 
http://barrkel.blogspot.com/

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