Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 00:22:56 +0000 (GMT) From: Richard Tobin <richard@inf.ed.ac.uk> To: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net>, user <user@dhp.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: cp/mv/etc : argument list too long ... I am sick of this Message-ID: <20051206002256.8BC2D561540@macintosh.inf.ed.ac.uk> In-Reply-To: David Kelly's message of Mon, 5 Dec 2005 17:13:16 -0600
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The sysctl kern.argmax reflects the maximum argument list size. It's set to 65536, at least in 4.11, and is (I think) not changeable except by rebuilding the kernel with a different value for ARG_MAX. > Is well and good that there be some limit to how much data one can pack > on the command line and incoming arglist in an application's > environment else fumble fingers could cause major havoc. This is a bogus argument. The number of fumbles prevented by a limit of 65536 is not going to be very different from the number if it was, say, a million. On the other hand, having to switch commands once your data passes some arbitrary size is annoying and (I assert :-) not in the spirit of BSD. There may well be some good reasons for limiting the argument size, especially on a multi-user system. But the right solution is to make setting kern.argmax work, and allow system admistrators to decide what's appropriate for their systems. (I don't have a more recent release handy to check with; maybe it's already been done.) -- Richard
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