Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!newstop!sun!coherent!dplatt From: dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: sort problem while running expire -r Keywords: sort Sun temp /tmp Message-ID: <34850@coherent.coherent.com> Date: 27 Sep 89 21:28:09 GMT Distribution: news Organization: Coherent Thought Inc., Palo Alto CA Lines: 40 I'm becoming quite frustrated, and could use some help if there's anybody out there who has encountered this problem before. I'm unable to run "expire -r" to rebuilt our news history file. Expire, itself, has no problems... but the sort process it forks off dies messily, because our root partition doesn't have enough space for the temporary sort files. We have about 2.5 megs free in our / partition, on which the /tmp directory lives... and that's where Sun's "sort" puts its scratch file(s). I've tried recompiling expire, using the -T option to redirect the temporary files to another filesystem on which more space is available. I've been unsuccessful. I've tried specifying "-T/usr/tmp" and "-T/usr/tmp/", but neither appears to have any effect... sort still places its "sm" temporary file in /tmp rather than in the directory I pointed it to. I've tried running "sort" manually, specifying the -T option. The option is apparently accepted (no error message is displayed), but it has no apparent effect. It looks as if this is a bug in Sun's "sort" program (and thus perhaps in BSD sort as well?), and that I may be unable to sort any file whose size exceeds the amount of space available in the root partition. If so, this is quite unfortunate. Has anyone else tackled this problem successfully? I realize that I could probably symlink /tmp over onto another file-system... but the thought of doing this makes my skin crawl. Are there any other solutions, other than hoping that Sun fixes 'sort' someday? Configuration: SunOS 3.5 running on a 3/280. News 2.11B, patch level 17. -- Dave Platt FIDONET: Dave Platt on 1:204/444 VOICE: (415) 493-8805 UUCP: ...!{ames,sun,uunet}!coherent!dplatt DOMAIN: dplatt@coherent.com INTERNET: coherent!dplatt@ames.arpa, ...@uunet.uu.net USNAIL: Coherent Thought Inc. 3350 West Bayshore #205 Palo Alto CA 94303