Subject: "diff" loses on large files?
To: , <port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: Mike Cheponis <mac@Wireless.Com>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 07/11/2001 22:08:14
To me, this seems like -serious- "diff" braindamage.    Since this is GNU
stuff, I'm not terribly surprised.  But how do I fix this?  Do I have to
fix it and then submit it back to the GNU project and hope they accept it,
and -then- have it fixed in NetBSD?

Thanks -Mike

$ dmesg|head -6
NetBSD 1.5.1_BETA2 (GENERIC) #41: Wed May 16 01:28:41 CEST 2001
    he@nsa.uninett.no:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
cpu0: AMD Athlon Model 4 (Thunderbird) (686-class), 1100.12 MHz
total memory = 511 MB
avail memory = 468 MB
using 6574 buffers containing 26296 KB of memory

$ ll *odx
3065307 -rw-r--r--  1 mac  user  661,969,123 Jul 11 21:45 bad.odx
3065315 -rw-r--r--  1 mac  user  661,969,123 Jul 11 21:45 ok.odx

$ diff -H  *odx
diff: memory exhausted

$ diff -v
diff - GNU diffutils version 2.7

$ swapctl -l
Device      1024-blocks     Used       Avail  Capacity  Priority
/dev/wd0b     2,098,152        0   2,098,152     0%    0
/dev/wd2b       614,376        0     614,376     0%    0
Total         2,712,528        0   2,712,528     0%

S>head -3 ok.odx
0000000     8b1f    0808    52ca    3b4d    0302    6177    2e76    6174
0000020     0072    7ddc    7c75    4755    eed7    273e    0621    8121
0000040     6090    0481    2e0b    4081    5b82    7770    9428    5296

S>head -3 bad.odx
0000000     8b1f    0808    52ca    3b4d    0302    6177    2e76    6174
0000020     0072    7ddc    7c75    4755    eed7    273e    0621    8121
0000040     6090    0481    2e0b    4081    5b82    7770    9428    5296

Both *odx files are the output of a "od -x" of two binary files.