segfault using shutil.make_archive

[Michael Torrie]

On 10/06/2016 10:46 AM, Tim wrote:
> I need to zip up a directory that's about 400mb.
> I'm using shutil.make_archive and I'm getting this response:
> 
>     Segmentation fault: 11 (core dumped)
> 
> The code is straightforward (and works on other, smaller dirs):
> 
>     shutil.make_archive(os.path.join(zip_dir, zname), 'zip', tgt_dir)
> 
> I guess I could drop the convenience of make_archive and use zipfile but that seems to be exactly what make_archive does.
> 
> I'm on FreeBSD, python2.7.
> 
> Anyone seen this before?

Does normal the normal zip utility crash also when trying to zip up this
large directory?  I'm not familiar with how shutils.make_archive works,
but since it's part of shutils, I suspect it's calling the zip command
as a subprocess, rather than using the Python zip module.  Given the
size of your directory I doubt the zip module would work anyway.

If the zip command works, you could just execute it using popen from
within Python.