Re: du: fts and vfat

[Jim Meyering]

Phillip Susi <address@hidden> wrote:
> Jim Meyering wrote:
>> Yes, it's expected, whenever you use a file system with
>> imperfect-by-definition inode emulation.
>
> AFAIR, the fat driver uses the starting cluster of the file as the
> inode number, so unless you defrag or something, it shouldn't change.

Sorry, but no.
If only it were so easy.
The kernel maintains a limited-space cache for FAT inodes,
so the inode of "." at the beginning of a traversal will not
be the same as the inode reported for that same directory
after du/fts has traversed a tree that's large enough.

As I said, use a newer version of coreutils, and not in
chdir-mode, and du works a lot better with FAT.