# ZFS snapshot name length limit? (File name too long)



## hopla (Mar 10, 2010)

Hi,

I'm using sysutils/zfs-snapshot-mgmt for automatic creation and purging of ZFS snapshots. It creates snapshot names like this (zfsfilesys is not the actual name of the zfs filesystem, it's actually a bit longer. Why is this important? See below.):

zfsfilesys@auto-2010-03-10_06.00

Clean and simple naming scheme you would think, but when I `ls -la zfsfilesys/.zfs/snapshot`, I get output from ls:


```
ls: auto-2010-03-10_06.00: File name too long
```

This happens for all snapshots with names longer than 16 characters for this particular zfs file system.

Snapshots shorter than 16 characters are listed.


```
drwxr-xr-x   12 root  wheel   23 Dec 24 14:06 2010-02-02-00/
```

The name of the actual file system is 56 characters, starting from 'tank/'
For file systems with shorters names, longer snapshot names *are* accessible.

This seems to imply a maximum length of 72 characters (snapshot '@' sign excluded) for *usable* snapshots? (usable in the sense that we can mount/look into them)

What limit am I (we?) hitting here? Is this a problem with ZFS itself or with FreeBSD? Sure looks like a silly limit for the filesystem that touts 'biggest everything' 

I'm using FreeBSD 8.0, the zpool was freshly created on the 8.0 OS (not upgraded from older FreeBSD ZFS version).

Thanks for ANY insight on this problem.

Hopla


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## dennylin93 (Mar 10, 2010)

Have you tried asking on the freebsd-fs@ mailing list? It's quite likely that pjd@ will answer your question there.


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## hopla (Mar 11, 2010)

dennylin93 said:
			
		

> Have you tried asking on the freebsd-fs@ mailing list? It's quite likely that pjd@ will answer your question there.



I have reposted my question on the list and pjd has responded: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-fs/2010-March/007964.html

Please follow the subject over there, since I do not wish to sync posts between this forum and the list


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