Many of my scheduled jobs running under dcron are breaking with the now familiar: xargs: environment is too large for exec error. This has been seen in bug #21438 and others, and comes down to a deliberate limitation in xargs. It seems that dcron passes whatever environment it runs with through to all commands it invokes. However, this environment is large partly due to many exported shell functions (provided by /sbin/runscript I guess), with the upshot that subsequent xargs invocations complain. Some possible resolutions: * Start dcron with a reduced environment: e.g. # diff /usr/portage/sys-apps/dcron/files/dcron.rc6 dcron.new 13,14c13,17 < start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exec /usr/sbin/crond \ < -- >>/var/log/cron.log 2>&1 --- > env -i bash <<-EOF > . /etc/profile > start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exec /usr/sbin/crond \ > -- >>/var/log/cron.log 2>&1 > EOF This also has the advantage that environment settings are not passed in to dcron when started by hand, e.g. CVSROOT. * Patch xargs to remove/relax the limitation: Bug #21438 has several links to discussions and patches. * Stop /sbin/runscript exporting shell functions: Unsetting all runscript's shell functions reduces the environment size to well under 20k (for me at least). There may be applications other than xargs that impose environment size limits upon themselves, and this measure would help those too. However, there may be a good reason for those functions to be exported. My preference would be to limit the environment passed to dcron, and to reduce the environment size in init.d scripts anyway by changing /sbin/runscript. Modifying the behaviour of a ubiquitous tool like xargs is something to be considered quite carefully :-) Phew, that was a long one... :-) Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Schedule a job that invokes xargs with dcron. Actual Results: xargs: environment is too large for exec Expected Results: Portage 2.0.48-r5 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2-r1) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.19-gentoo-r10 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2600+ GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo/ http://194.83.57.7/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/ http://194.83.57.3/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/ http://194.83.57.2/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.easynet.nl/mirror/gentoo//" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /var/bind /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" USE="x86 oss 3dnow avi crypt encode foomaticdb gif jpeg gnome libg++ mad mikmod mmx mpeg ncurses nls pdflib png quicktime spell truetype xml2 xmms xv zlib gdbm berkdb slang readline arts svga tcltk java guile mysql postgres X sdl gpm tcpd pam libwww ssl perl python esd imlib oggvorbis gtk qt kde motif opengl mozilla ldap scanner acpi dga dvd gd innodb maildir samba usb -apm -cups" COMPILER="gcc3" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" MAKEOPTS="-j2" AUTOCLEAN="yes" SYNC="rsync://rsync.uk.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" FEATURES="sandbox ccache"
Even with baselayout .10 ?
baselayout 1.8.6.10-r1 fixes it. Cheers!
