dd with exit code 159.

chinabenjamin66 · 05-07-2013, 09:42 PM

Hello All,
I want to create a file with size 4GB+ under linux, but it cannot be generated with the following error. please help me!

Code:

/tmp/mnt/sda1
# dd if=/dev/zero of=out4Gplus bs=4M count=1100
File size limit exceeded
# echo $?
159

The platform information:

Code:

# uname -a
Linux tc 2.6.22.15 #1 SMP Fri Dec 14 09:59:02 CST 2012 mips unknown

What other information do you need to explan the issue?

Thanks all.

kbp · 05-07-2013, 10:09 PM

You'll need to know which filesystem is in use wherever you are creating the file .. /tmp/mnt/sda1 ?

Try:

Code:

cat /proc/mounts

Once you know which filesystem you can search for the file size limitation.

jpollard · 05-09-2013, 06:50 AM

The usual reason for this error is using a filesystem like FAT to try and hold a 4 GB file.

This is a limit of the specific destination filesystem but not the system as a whole.

Beryllos · 05-09-2013, 03:43 PM

I suspect you have a FAT or FAT32 filesystem. If I execute your command on my external USB drive with vfat filesystem (I think that's equivalent to FAT32), the transfer fails when the file size reaches 4GB-1byte. According to Wikipedia, that is the limit of FAT32. I get exit code 1, and more informative messages; I guess that depends on the version of Linux.

Code:

tony> dd if=/dev/zero of=out4Gplus bs=4M count=1100
dd: writing ‘out4Gplus’: File too large
1024+0 records in
1023+0 records out
4294967295 bytes (4.3 GB) copied, 156.61 s, 27.4 MB/s
tony> echo $?
1

If I try it in a ext4 filesystem (here I use my /home partition), it fails upon filling the partition:

Code:

tony> dd if=/dev/zero of=out1T bs=1M count=1M
dd: writing ‘out1T’: No space left on device
13731+0 records in
13730+0 records out
14397227008 bytes (14 GB) copied, 282.76 s, 50.9 MB/s
tony> echo $?
1

chinabenjamin66 · 05-15-2013, 02:09 AM

Thank you all for your constructive suggestions.

I also tried it on a ext3 file system , and the return message is the same with that. I think it is the kernel configuration limitation for creating files with size larger than specific value, for example 2G.
I attached the usb driver to my PC, and found that the size of the file created is 2G. this is router with embedded linux. can any one tell me how to get the kernel configuration of the linux? I try to figure it out.

chinabenjamin66 · 05-15-2013, 03:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kbp

You'll need to know which filesystem is in use wherever you are creating the file .. /tmp/mnt/sda1 ?

Try:

Code:

cat /proc/mounts

Once you know which filesystem you can search for the file size limitation.

see the following：

Code:

/dev/sda2 on /tmp/mnt/sda2 type ext3 (rw,nodev,noatime,data=ordered)
# cd /tmp/mnt/sda2
# ls
lost+found
# dd if=/dev/zero of=out4Gplus bs=4M count=1100
File size limit exceeded

rtmistler · 05-16-2013, 11:48 AM

For what it's worth, this is a bash subroutine I use when creating a copy of compact flash root file systems. Reason being is that I've found that the compact flashes that you buy all have different maximum sizes. So as a result if I copy the entire disk using dd, and copy it to a larger disk for storage, then later try to copy it to another compact flash same sized as the original; for example production copying, you run into size problems if the original one the file was created from happened to be larger sized than the target one. My point here is that not all 4G or 8G flash drives, or thumbsticks have EXACTLY the same number of bytes, therefore it caused problems.

The result was a script, this part copies the root file system (because that's the intent) into a file system large enough to store it, then resizes that file system to the minimum required. Thus removing the unused disk space from the file and reducing the size of the file. The $1 argument is the original /dev/sd<letter> compact flash and the $2 argument is the target file for the RFS, in this case we pretty much always use rfs.ext2 because we do an ext2 file system.

Code:

# Function to copy the root file system
copy_rfs()
{
    sudo /usr/local/bin/genext2fs -b 1024 $2
    # Resize to 8 Gigabytes to perform the copy
    sudo /sbin/resize2fs -f $2 8000000
    sudo mkdir -p copy
    sudo mount -o loop $2 copy
    cd copy
    sudo cp -a $1/* .
    cd ..
    sudo umount copy
    sudo rm -rf copy
    # Check the file system
    sudo /sbin/e2fsck -f $2
    # Resize it to the minimum number of blocks required
    sudo /sbin/resize2fs -M $2
    return $?
}