[PLUG] strange behavior of "cp" command noticed when copying very large files

website reader website.reader3 at gmail.com
Thu Mar 29 02:08:25 UTC 2012


Is the odd behavior of the "cp" command which I have observed normal?

I have a large partition (call it /large) set up which is about 3
terabytes in size.

When I copy a 24 gigabyte file in that partition to another file in
the same partition, I notice that system memory starts to get used up.
 In fact almost all of the 24.733 gigabytes of memory is eventually
used, with only 500 meg or less left for system use.

This has made normal tasks, like "ls" and "vim" practically unusable,
as very large delays now take place between the time that you type
something into the vim editor and when you see the cursor actually
move or the command execute.

Is this normal for "cp" ???

I am running Linux 2.6.32-39 on an Ubuntu 10.04 system which is very
nearly up to date, as far as software goes.

But I find this odd that "cp" would request 24 gigabytes+ of system
memory or does it want the same amount of memory as the file size?

Randall



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