Veritas File System 5.0 Release Notes (September 2006)

Veritas File System 5.0 Release Notes
Known Issues
Chapter 120
The fsadm command cannot truncate a directory if it has only one extent that is more than two blocks
in length, even if all the directory entries are deleted.
• Inode limitation on file systems without large file support
For a file system to have more than 8 million inodes, you must create it using the largefiles option
of mkfs. The fsadm utility can also be used to set the largefiles flag on the file system. The
largefiles option is enabled by default on VxFS 4.1 and later releases. In previous VxFS releases,
nolargefiles was the default mount option.
See the mkfs_vxfs (1M) and fsadm_vxfs (1M) manpages.
• Non-standard command behavior when using ACLs
The output of the ls -l command on VxFS file systems shows mask /CLASS_OBJ in place of group
permissions if Access Control Lists (ACLs) are in use on a file or a directory. You can determine the
effective group permissions by using the getacl command. In the next release of VxFS, the behavior
of ls -l will show effective group permissions, that is, GROUP_OBJ masked by CLASS_OBJ.
The chmod command changes mask /CLASS_OBJ instead of the group permissions if ACLs are in use
on a file or a directory. GROUP_OBJ is not changed by chmod, and because effective group permissions
are determined by GROUP_OBJ and CLASS_OBJ, the default group may not receive the permissions
specified by chmod. Because ls -l shows mask only (which is changed by chmod), it only appears
that the group permissions are changed as specified in chmod.
Use of the chmod command is not advisable on files with ACLs. Instead, use the getacl command to
manipulate permissions. In the next release of VxFS, the behavior of both the masks /CLASS_OBJ and
GROUP_OBJ will be to change after executing the chmod command. Even in that case, using the
getacl command is advisable for manipulating permissions.
Even if the parent directory has default ACLs, umask is applied to a newly created file. According to
POSIX standards, umask should be applied only if the parent directory does not have any default
ACLs. In the next release of VxFS, this behavior will be made POSIX compliant.
See the aclsort (3C), chmod (1), getacl (1), ls (1), setacl (1), and uname (1) manpages.
• The newfs -R command allows reserving swap space larger than the device
The newfs -R command will reserve swap space greater than is available on the underlying device.
This problem will be addressed in a future patch release.
• Large files should be mounted only on systems with sufficient memory
When a file system is mounted, VxFS keeps certain data structures in the kernel. As the size of the file
system increases, the amount of data structures stored by VxFS also increases. The file system typically
keeps approximately 128 bytes per allocation unit (32,768 file system blocks). This translates to a usage