Re: prunefs/paths on AIX

[James Youngman]

On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 2:22 PM AIXperts Consultancy ltd.
<henrik.morsing@aixperts.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> Good morning,
>
> We have a problem with running updatedb on AIX filling up either /var or
> /tmp. This seems to come from sort generating temporary files, but it
> does not appear to be a problem on Linux.

The updatedb program is just a shell script.  You can edit it to
troubleshoot the problem.   For example, you can include a "set -x" to
determine what commands are being run.

If you run the same "find" command, how big is the output?   How much
space is available in your temporary directory?

> I have scrutinised sort but
> cannot explain the difference in it's default option form.

I'm not sure what you mean here.   But, if "find" completes
successfully, then the next diagnostic step is to manually run the
sort command, as updatedb does, to find out if that works or not, and
if not, why not.

>
> However, I tried rectifying the issues by using prunefs, then
> prunepaths, neither which seems to work on AIX.

If prunepaths "doesn't work on AIX" this likely means that updatedb
isn't invoking GNU find, but is instead invoking the AIX find binary.
 The updatedb program is not intended to be used that way.

> The man page mentions
> /etc/mtab, which doesn't exist on AIX, so that could explain prunefs not
> working.

Could be.   Perhaps, having access to an AIX system and the GNU find
source code, you can determine what the problem is.

James.