[plug] xargs, "Argument list too long"

[James Devenish]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 10:50:12AM +0800, Mike Holland wrote:
> Can anybody tell me why it would be a really bad idea to try and fix 
> this? (Replacing MAX_ARG_PAGES with a dynamic num_arg_pages)

AFAIK at least one operating system *does* let you configure this as a
runtime kernel parameter. And many have a higher default maximum than
Linux 2.2. To find out your current maximum on most systems, `getconf
ARG_MAX` would do the trick. I'm not aware of any systems that can offer
to let you configure this in the style of ulimit (which is probably the
feature that would relevant in the introduction of a non kernel-wide
maximum). Having no limit of any form, or an maximum that can be
dynamically increased by general users, might be fine for single-user
machines but would be a bit of a liability on multi-user machines and
network hosts.