syncsort

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I have got the following error messahe in the log file while running the syncsort process in a unix script.

Starting the Syncsort Process
[SyncSort HP-UX/64 Rel. 3.9.0 Copyright (c) 2004 Syncsort Inc.]
SyncSort : (KEYEXPWARN) the license key (43966) will expire on Feb 28, 2011
           (TECHSVC) please contact Syncsort Technical Support
SyncSort options validated. Processing continues.
SyncSort : (EWRIT) unable to write to /test/ccps/data/ccps_cust_contr_prod_sls_sum.FIFO
           () Broken pipe
SyncSort has aborted
Error while running Summary process using Syncsort.

I don't have any idea on this....can anyone please explain.

2

Well, a fifo is a pipe is either a special fd of the pair created by pipe() or a named pipe created by the mknod p command, but either way, syncsort is probably doing parallel processing and delivering results via pipes between processes, and some correspondent process at the other end of the pipe died. Maybe you ran out of some resource. You might run it under truss, tusc or strace to see who died of what.

Did you look at that path? Was there a pipe there?

 
ls -ld  /test/ccps/data/ccps_cust_contr_prod_sls_sum.FIFO
 
Like this:
 
$ /usr/sbin/mknod my_FIFO p
$ ls -ld my_FIFO
prw-r--r--   1 nbkodln    develop          0 Jan  3 16:39 my_FIFO
$
3

Assuming that this is not a basic scripting error, I suspect that the user running the sort does not have permission to write to the directory /test/ccps/data/ or that the aforementioned directory is placed on a filesystem which is full.

4

Named pipes need permission, but I believe they do not use any space when written through, as they are just place holders for a pipe() call under the covers, and the data resides in the two apps' buffers as it moves through the pipe.

Sometimes there is an option or environment variable to move such directories to a more appropriate place.

I am not syncsort expert, and it is very proprietary about it's magic, so if you have a license, I bet they are a real good source of information. Also, look in your installation directories for man dirs, html pages and txt files.