bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long

redhatwannabe · 12-30-2014, 07:29 PM

Code:

oracle4@NODE01:~> ls -ld /u01/app/oracle4/diag/rdbms/orclee/ORCLEE1/trace/*.trc
bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long
oracle4@NODE01:~>

I encountered this error after the a cron job is run successfully.

Code:

oracle4@NODE01:~> crontab -l
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE - edit the master and reinstall.
# (/home/oracle4/cronjob/cronjob_schedule.txt installed on Tue Dec 30 17:18:44 2014)
# (Cron version V5.0 -- $Id: crontab.c,v 1.12 2004/01/23 18:56:42 vixie Exp $)
MAILTO="yury@velikanov.com"
59 23 28-31 * * [ "$(/bin/date +\%d -d tomorrow)" = "31" ] && /home/oracle4/scripts/archive_alert_log/archive_alert_log.sh >&1

the contents of archive_alert_log is as follow

Code:

export CURRENT_USER=oracle4
export DB_BASE=/u01/app/$CURRENT_USER
export ORACLE_BASE=$DB_BASE
export ADR_BASE=$ORACLE_BASE
export PRODUCT_TYPE=rdbms
export PRODUCT_ID=orclee
export INSTANCE_ID=ORCLEE1
export SUBDIR=trace
export ADR_HOME=$ADR_BASE/diag/$PRODUCT_TYPE/$PRODUCT_ID/$INSTANCE_ID

export FIND=/usr/bin/find
export RM=/bin/rm
export MV=/bin/mv

export DAYS=+30

export HOME=/home/$CURRENT_USER

log_datetime="$(date +'%Y%m%d_%H%M%S')"

export DB_HOME=$DB_BASE/product/11.2.0.3/dbhome_1
export ORACLE_HOME=$DB_HOME
export NODENAME=node01
 
export NLS_DATE_FORMAT='YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS'

$MV $ADR_HOME/$SUBDIR/alert_$INSTANCE_ID.log $ADR_HOME/$SUBDIR/alert_$INSTANCE_ID.log_$log_datetime

$FIND $ADR_HOME/$SUBDIR/alert_$INSTANCE_ID.log_* -mtime $DAYS -exec rm {} \;

export SUBDIR=alert


$MV $ADR_HOME/$SUBDIR/log.xml $ADR_HOME/$SUBDIR/log.xml_$log_datetime

$FIND $ADR_HOME/$SUBDIR/log.xml_* -mtime $DAYS -exec rm {} \;

echo "$NODENAME $CURRENT_USER alert log has been archived."

how to I resolve this error?

many thanks in advance!

Ser Olmy · 12-30-2014, 07:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by redhatwannabe

Code:

oracle4@NODE01:~> ls -ld /u01/app/oracle4/diag/rdbms/orclee/ORCLEE1/trace/*.trc
bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long
oracle4@NODE01:~>

I encountered this error after the a cron job is run successfully.

The shell will attempt to expand the wildcard before passing the arguments to the command, but in this case it seems the wildcard simply expands to such a large number of files that the argument list exceeds what bash is capable of handling.

How many .trc files does the directory /u01/app/oracle4/diag/rdbms/orclee/ORCLEE1/trace/ contain?

Have you tried entering the directory first, and then run the command?

Code:

cd /u01/app/oracle4/diag/rdbms/orclee/ORCLEE1/trace
ls -ld *.trc

That will make each filename exactly 50 characters shorter, and that quickly adds up to a significant number of characters if there are lots of files.

veerain · 12-30-2014, 08:46 PM

You can use instead:

Code:

find /u01/app/oracle4/diag/rdbms/orclee/ORCLEE1/trace/ -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -exec ls -ld "{}" \;

redhatwannabe · 12-30-2014, 10:13 PM

Yes I was able to execute the command that you recommend to me

Code:

cd /u01/app/oracle4/diag/rdbms/orclee/ORCLEE1/trace
ls -ld *.trc

-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     1076 Dec 10 19:47 ORCLEE1_w000_9960.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     4300 Dec 10 09:05 ORCLEE1_w000_9961.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     1076 Dec 11 13:13 ORCLEE1_w000_9964.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     3227 Dec 11 00:13 ORCLEE1_w000_9966.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     1076 Dec 11 02:57 ORCLEE1_w000_9969.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     2148 Dec 11 03:22 ORCLEE1_w000_996.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     2151 Dec 10 19:14 ORCLEE1_w000_9971.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     3227 Dec 11 09:29 ORCLEE1_w000_9972.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     1076 Dec 11 05:42 ORCLEE1_w000_9974.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     1075 Dec  9 22:51 ORCLEE1_w000_9976.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     1075 Dec  9 20:15 ORCLEE1_w000_9977.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     3226 Dec 10 15:57 ORCLEE1_w000_9979.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     1073 Dec 10 02:33 ORCLEE1_w000_997.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     1075 Dec  9 20:41 ORCLEE1_w000_9980.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     2151 Dec 11 14:52 ORCLEE1_w000_9981.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     1075 Dec 10 03:32 ORCLEE1_w000_9982.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     1076 Dec 11 12:11 ORCLEE1_w000_9983.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     1075 Dec  9 18:56 ORCLEE1_w000_9984.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     1076 Dec 10 15:24 ORCLEE1_w000_9987.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin     1075 Dec  9 22:00 ORCLEE1_w000_9988.trc

I was also able to execute find /u01/app/oracle4/diag/rdbms/orclee/ORCLEE1/trace/ -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -exec ls -ld "{}" \;

Code:

find /u01/app/oracle4/diag/rdbms/orclee/ORCLEE1/trace/ -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -exec ls -ld "{}" \;

-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin 1075 Dec  9 23:38 /u01/app/oracle4/diag/rdbms/orclee/ORCLEE1/trace/ORCLEE1_m000_4244.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin 349 Dec 11 07:55 /u01/app/oracle4/diag/rdbms/orclee/ORCLEE1/trace/ORCLEE1_j000_14900.trm
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin 63 Dec 11 08:02 /u01/app/oracle4/diag/rdbms/orclee/ORCLEE1/trace/ORCLEE1_j000_21311.trm
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin 1415 Dec 17 06:21 /u01/app/oracle4/diag/rdbms/orclee/ORCLEE1/trace/ORCLEE1_gcr0_1587.trc
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin 205 Dec 11 04:41 /u01/app/oracle4/diag/rdbms/orclee/ORCLEE1/trace/ORCLEE1_w000_14040.trm
-rw-r----- 1 oracle4 asmadmin 5105 Dec 11 12:59 /u01/app/oracle4/diag/rdbms/orclee/ORCLEE1/trace/ORCLEE1_j000_28418.trc

What was actually the cause of the error? the number of files or the length of the directory I'm passing to the ls -lrt?

thanks a lot!

Ser Olmy · 12-30-2014, 10:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by redhatwannabe

What was actually the cause of the error? the number of files or the length of the directory I'm passing to the ls -lrt?

The root cause is that the the path length for each file combined with the number of files in the base directory resulted in a list of command line arguments that was simply too long.

bash expanded the wildcard into a string of characters that turned out to be too long for it to handle, so it reported an error. Because of this, the ls command was never actually invoked.