: Value too large for defined data type

Ever seen this error? It happens in Solaris 8 when attempting to read a file from a USB memory stick or drive. The cause is that the file was improperly written by a system running Mac OS X and Solaris is strict in its interpretation of FAT rules. The cause of this error is that Mac OS X does not set the last access time of the file correctly. Solaris requires it to be set to a real value. It cannot access the file until that has been corrected. The easiest way to fix this is to access the offending file(s) from a non-Solaris system. Any copy, open, or read of the file will set the access time to a valid date/time. Those who can work the terminal, can do a "touch -a" on the file(s). This will set the time to midnight (a shortcoming of the FAT and FAT32 filesystems) and the date according to the system date.. If you need to be sure you can read all the files on your USB memory stick, do the following in the terminal: cd /Volumes/memory_stick find . -exec touch -a {} \; substituting the volume name of your memory stick as appropriate. Looking in /var/adm/messages on the Solaris system finds this additional error: pcfs: [ID 613697 kern.info] NOTICE: pcfs: alternate FAT corrupted I don't have a fix to correct this except for connecting the memory stick to a PC (-ick-) and running scandisk on it.

Last Update: 2 November 2007 by Harry Dodgson