My standard .profile sets the following environment variable:

----- cut here -----
BLOCKSIZE=1k
export BLOCKSIZE
----- cut here -----

What is the reason that it is set to 1k?

It seems that $BLOCKSIZE also influences the behaviour of commands
like df or du, which spits out 1k blocks instead of 512 byte blocks
(the option -k should be used for 1k blocks).

--
Cu  Georges Heinesch, Luxembourg
    geohei@ibm.net - geohei@geocities.com
    http://www.geocities.com/yosemite/2480
    PGP 2.6.3i / 5.1i public key on request and on public servers

... don't do anything, I wouldn't do ...