Thread: cat: [file]: Invalid argument
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Old 17th November 2011
pieterverberne pieterverberne is offline
Real Name: Pieter Verberne
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: The Netherlands, Veldhoven
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Default cat: [file]: Invalid argument
Hola,

$ cat winxp1.8.ova > /dev/null
cat: winxp1.8.ova: Invalid argument

What could cause this? This 3GB file is not entirely readable anymore. When I cat/copy/md5/rsync it I always get errors. It happens to more big files, and to big files only.

rsync says:
rsync: read errors mapping "[snip]/winxp1.8.ova": Invalid argument (22)
ERROR: [snip]/winxp1.8.ova failed verification -- update discarded.

Dmesg doesn't say a thing. This same file is on multiple volumes, and all volumes give this fault. I just upgraded to OpenBSD Current (OpenBSD lilium.garden 5.0 GENERIC#90 i386) This is the first time I see this error, and I backup almost daily with rsnapshot/rsync.

The filesystem is not corrupt. I don't think a file on itself can become corrupt so that cat(1) cannot read it anymore.

Ow, and the ova file is still usable by VirtualBox :-)

Could this be an OpenBSD bug?

Update: I transferred the ova file to another computer via NFS. There, the ova file is usable. So, the file is actually readable. Maybe NFS is not very picky about errors?
Last edited by pieterverberne; 18th November 2011 at 11:07 AM.
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