From: Greg Ercolano <erco@(email surpressed)>
Subject: Rush + Fedora Core 3/4 Linux problem file browsing remote IRIX64
   Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 23:33:11 -0800

Ran across a problem today where someone was trying to use the submit script
file browser to browse into a remotely mounted SGI nfs server, and getting
an error message in the file browser:

	Value too large for defined data type

...even though 'ls' of the same directory looks fine.

The situation was a 32 bit Red Hat Enterprise 4 workstation
browsing a remotely mounted SGI running IRIX64 version 6.5.x (a 64 bit OS).

It seems Linux's scandir(3) function (used by the file browser)
can't handle the SGI mount's 64 bit data, and fails to access the
directory listing.

The scandir(3) function is apparently correctly detecting the SGI
server's 64 bit data structures, and is unable to pass them back
to the 32 bit structures of the local OS.

I found I could replicate this problem even with linux's own find(1)
function, using a fedora core 3 system mounting an IRIX64 Indigo2 Extreme:

    # uname -a
    Linux erie.erco.x 2.6.9-1.667 #1 Tue Nov 2 14:41:25 EST 2004 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

    # rsh huron uname -a
    IRIX64 huron 6.5 01091820 IP28

    # ls /huron/tmp
    myfile.0000     pmlogger   showcase.log                        <-- shows listing OK
    myfile.0700     prods.tmp  tca.log
    myfile.0777     rush       test

    # find /huron/tmp
    /huron/tmp
    find: /huron/tmp: Value too large for defined data type        <-- fails

I'm not sure what the solution is, since the problem seems to be in the OS.
The only workaround I can think of is to use a different mounting strategy,
like SMB instead of NFS, or maybe there's an OS patch?

Greg Ercolano wrote:

Ran across a problem today where someone was trying to use the submit script file browser to browse into a remotely mounted SGI nfs server,

and getting an error message in the file browser:

    Value too large for defined data type

..even though 'ls' of the same directory looks fine.

The situation was a 32 bit Red Hat Enterprise 4 workstation
browsing a remotely mounted SGI running IRIX64 version 6.5.x (a 64 bit OS).

It seems Linux's scandir(3) function (used by the file browser)
can't handle the SGI mount's 64 bit data, and fails to access the
directory listing.

The scandir(3) function is apparently correctly detecting the SGI
server's 64 bit data structures, and is unable to pass them back
to the 32 bit structures of the local OS.

    Just a side note on this subject of the "Value too large.." error.
    I think I discovered this is not a bug, but just a matter of compiling
    programs under linux with "gcc -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64".

    This causes code to build with 64 bit aware versions
    of scandir() and opendir() functions, so that they work
    correctly under linux with the SGI's 64 bit mount points.
    Usually no code changes are needed (unless you make assumptions
    about the data type used for things like off_t)

    For more info on this, see bugzilla.redhat.com bug #155624,
    Comments #7 and #8.

    I'll see if I can make modified binaries for the next
    maintenance release.