Re: RFC: do you use du --bytes (-b) [Re: 'du -b' bug in fileutils-4.1

[David Eisner]

On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Jim Meyering wrote:

> David, how is the old functionality of `du -b' useful to you?


Thanks for the prompt reply.  I was using du to get a sense of whether
an rsync operation between two hosts was successful.  When the
numbers didn't match, I did some testing and discovered the du -b
issue.

It would be nice to have the option of getting the v3.16 '-b' behavior.

What's most important, to me, at least, is (having the option of)
getting consistent results across platforms with the same version of du.

In my case, I'm comparing files on one machine running Solaris 2.6,
and the other running Cygwin/Windows XP.  Once I discovered the change
in behavior, I installed fileutils-4.1 on the Solaris box to have the
same version that Cygwin uses.

Even so, I'm getting different results.  For a particular file,
'du -k' reports one value on the Solaris box, and another on the
Cygwin box.  Both agree on the file size when using ls -l.  I haven't
figured out why, however.  It could be a Cygwin issue.

Solaris box:

  cannes[ ...eprc2_mccluskey/jaspreet ]% uname -a
  SunOS cannes.umd.edu 5.6 Generic_105181-26 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-30
  cannes[ ...eprc2_mccluskey/jaspreet ]% du --version
  du (fileutils) 4.1
  Written by Torbjorn Granlund, David MacKenzie, Larry McVoy, and Paul Eggert.

  Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
  warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
  cannes[ ...eprc2_mccluskey/jaspreet ]% ls -l thinpak1.db.Z
  -rw-r--r--   1 42726    calce-grads165447589 Feb  5  2001 thinpak1.db.Z
  cannes[ ...eprc2_mccluskey/jaspreet ]% du -k thinpak1.db.Z
  161664  thinpak1.db.Z

Cygwin/Windows XP box:

  oroborus [ /cygdrive/c/mccluskey/jaspreet ]$ uname -a
  CYGWIN_NT-5.1 oroborus 1.3.20(0.73/3/2) 2003-02-08 12:10 i686 unknown unknown 
Cygwin
  oroborus [ /cygdrive/c/mccluskey/jaspreet ]$ du --version
  du (fileutils) 4.1
  Written by Torbjorn Granlund, David MacKenzie, Larry McVoy, and Paul Eggert.

  Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
  warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
  oroborus [ /cygdrive/c/mccluskey/jaspreet ]$ ls -l thinpak1.db.Z
  -rw-r--r--    1 cradle   None     165447589 Feb  5  2001 thinpak1.db.Z
  oroborus [ /cygdrive/c/mccluskey/jaspreet ]$ du -k thinpak1.db.Z
  161570  thinpak1.db.Z

-David