EMCopy error 206 - file name or extension is too long

[RaysonW]

Dear all,

Get a migration project and need to migrate file from NetApp to Isilon.  However, when using EMCopy for incremental copy, the EMCopy reported error on several files because filename or extension is too long.

I did not recall EMCopy has any switch to handle long path or filename.  Did I miss anything?  The error reported is 206.

The file in question using Chinese characters as file name and it is really very long.  In the log, all are shown as "?" for the file name.

Anyone has suggestion about how to workaround this?

Thanks,

Rayson

[russ_stevenson_ · Accepted solution]

This is a known issue, currently Isilon has a limit off 255 Bytes, not necessarily characters. Some Unicode character take up more than 1 or 2 bytes, up to 4 for some character set, so a short file name can actually get to 255 before you think.

Unfortunately, there is no way around this currently except a rename/shortening of a file name. The copy tools do not have a built in method of doing this. The copy tool will report the files it fails on, can these file names be targeted and shortened.

I've used this byte counter in the past to determine the actual byte count for unicode character file names.

http://mothereff.in/byte-counter

From the Isilon guidelines for large workflow doc.

File System

This section presents guidelines for aspects of the file system. Item	Guideline	Description
File name length	255 bytes	Most Unicode character encodings, such as UTF-8, which is the OneFS default, specify that a character can have multiple bytes. UTF-8 can have up to 4 bytes per character. As a result, the 255 bytes in a file name can range from 63 characters to 255 characters. The characters in some languages, such as Japanese,

[RaysonW]

Hi Russ,

Thanks for the information.  I just checked that the filename is 255+4 characters long (the +4 come from ".pdf" and the other are all Chinese characters).  This make Isilon (not EMCopy) not accept the files. 

I will see if the user agree to shorten the filename.

Thanks,

Rayson

[Jeffey1]

Hi RaysonW,

OneFS is a UNIX BSD-derived kernel and operating system, max length file name is 255 bytes in FreeBSD. I suppose that's why currently Isilon has a limit off 255 bytes for file name length.

[alanbs1]

"Long Path Tool" is best solution for these kind of problems.

[damienbarifon]

Try to long path tool. It is very helpful.

[Juan_Miller]

Try "LongPathTool program" that is best solution.