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I'm on a GoDaddy shared hosting Linux server ("unlimited" hosting).

I have a folder with product images for an e-commerce store that contains over 7000 images.

GoDaddy told me I'm not allowed to have over 1024 files in a single directory and that I need to reformat the folder structure, which isn't possible as this software is maintained and run by a Point-of-Sale system at my client's brick and mortar store.

I've SSH'd in and changed permissions on the folder I'm moving the image to and the image itself to 777 and issued the following command:

mv img.gif product_images/img.gif

and I get the following error:

mv: cannot move 'img.gif' to 'product_images/img.gif': File too large

The file is not "too large"; it is only 49 bytes (its a 1x1 gif)!

If I try drag+drop upload from Windows into the directory via FTP I get the following errors:

An error occurred copying a file to the FTP Server. Make sure you have permission to put files on the server.

Details:
200 TYPE is now 8-bit binary
227 Entering Passive Mode (184,168,167,92,197,60)
553-Can't open that file: File too large
553 Rename/move failure: no such file or directory

I DO have permission to put files on the server...its how I put the img.gif file there in the first place. The directory does exist. I can ls its contents just fine.

The previous support guy (who is not longer available) could do it - I just don't know how.

How can I go about moving files into this very stubborn directory? Any ideas?

David Murdoch
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    You don't think it's strange that GoDaddy told you to re-structure your directories and now you can't add files to a folder? Delete ~6500 images and try again, or contact GoDaddy tech support. – Joe Internet Jun 08 '11 at 13:58
  • Can you upload any files to another directory or location that is not inside the directory with the 7000 files? – baraboom Jun 08 '11 at 13:58
  • @Joe Internet: GoDaddy tech support is who I spoke with; he said they can "archive" the folder so I can download the files and restructure the directory. And as I stated in the question, this is not an option; the software that uses these images is maintained and run by a POS system. – David Murdoch Jun 08 '11 at 14:02
  • @baraboom, Yes, that works fine. I've uploaded several larger images to test that, so its not a disk-space issue. :-/ – David Murdoch Jun 08 '11 at 14:04

4 Answers4

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So, after googling godaddy 1024 file limit and reading a few results, it seems like your best option might be to find a new host.

Barring that, the least painful way I can think of to fix the problem would be to logically organize the files into subdirectories and then use Apache's rewrite rules to map the old paths to the new paths. This would save you changing anything in the actual application. The following would be one example:

1) Download the directory to your local computer;

2) Organize the files into sub-directories, it shouldn't be too bad with only 7000 files and the 1024 limit. For example, you could create 36 sub directories, one for each letter of the alphabet and one for each number, 0-9, and then place each subset of files into the appropriate subdirectory: file awhatever.gif would go into a/, file 11whatever would go into 1/, etc.

3) Create / edit the .htaccess file and create a rewrite rule that would map any request for product_images/awhatever.gif to product_images/a/awhatever.gif.

The .htaccess file would look something like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.)([^/]+)$ $1/$1$2 [L]
Jeremy Stein
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baraboom
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GoDaddy has directly told you that it doesn't allow what you want to do. The GoDaddy help pages tell you that what you want to do is not allowed. They even tell you that you'll get these sorts of error messages if you try to do what you are not allowed to do. And here you are, asking, "How, despite being told that I cannot by GoDaddy itself, do I do this?".

GoDaddy does not allow you to do this. Find someone else who does, or keep below the 1024 directory entries limit.

JdeBP
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  • Thanks, this answer is more of a comment than an answer to the question. We *are* considering moving the site to a dedicated server because of this restriction. But for the time being I need to move 7 more images into this folder. – David Murdoch Jun 08 '11 at 14:23
  • @jdeBP, So how did the 7,000 images get in there in the first place? – Moab Jun 08 '11 at 14:24
  • Also, http://help.godaddy.com./topic/306/article/4261 does not state that it is not allowed, just that I may receive an "Out of Disk Space" error. I know this is just a technicality, but the article states that it is an "*issue*" - an issue which the previous support guy was able to get around. – David Murdoch Jun 08 '11 at 14:25
  • How clear does _Your shared hosting account's directories **can hold up to 1,024 files**._ have to be for you to stop trying to argue that GoDaddy isn't telling you what it clearly _is_ telling you, both on its WWW site and when you talked to it? The people who run the servers have told you what _they won't allow you to do_. Stop thinking that if only you argued just a little bit more and asked the world just one more time, that the answer will magically change. You are declaring that that you need to have the impossible and that you won't accept anything else. – JdeBP Jun 08 '11 at 14:49
  • Did some research, looks like their enforcement is manual, not automatic - it's possible they have manually enforced this limit on the directory recently, which is why the previous support guy did not have any problems. Looks like your best bet is to find a new host! – baraboom Jun 08 '11 at 14:54
  • @JdeBP, Grumpy much? The fact is that there are *more* than 1024 files in that directory; so "*can hold up to 1,024 files*" isn't true in the least bit, is it? The previous support guy did this quite often. So I know it is/was possible ("was" according to @baraboom's research). – David Murdoch Jun 08 '11 at 15:00
  • Moab, one way for the files to have got there is the same way that they got there for the people who hit this several years ago: They were in place before the restriction came about. Also note that GoDaddy quite clearly states that it can and will do things like re-host (or outright wipe) the storage of people who exceed the limits, so it's quite plausible that this is a limit that, once exceeded, trips a switch as it were. – JdeBP Jun 08 '11 at 15:00
  • @baraboom Thanks! Can you point me to some of the research and/or open your own answer? – David Murdoch Jun 08 '11 at 15:02
  • M. Murdoch, whilst you are busy foolishly trying to adduce emotions from zero evidence, the clock is running on your client. You've been told quite unambiguously what you cannot do. You can choose to continue with these stupid arguments that black is white, or you can do what your hosting company has unequivocally told you that you must do, lest the company do it for you. The form letter for this says "If this is not completed, we will have to bring the directories into compliance on your behalf.". So choose: more black is white argument, or saving your client's GoDaddy account? – JdeBP Jun 08 '11 at 15:10
  • @JdeBP, can we chat: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/542/discussion-on-su-question-294535 – David Murdoch Jun 08 '11 at 15:35
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Get around the issue by creating a CSS sprite-sheet for the product images. You'll reduce your number of files exponentially.

Stefan Kendall
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    Good idea, but there are over 11,000 active products in the POS database (and not all of them have images). So, it still doesn't circumvent the issue. – David Murdoch Jun 08 '11 at 15:15
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There might be one trick you can try, if GoDaddy allows hardlinks:

ln img.gif product_images/img.gif

Granted, if the error message is simply misleading (and it's actually a "too many files" error, rather than an "out of disk space" error), this probably still won't work. But if this succeeds, you will have identical img.gif's both in your original directory and your subdirectory, but the file pointers will point to the same physical file, so no additional space will be used (aside from the pointer).

If all goes well, you can safely delete the original file, and the one in the subdirectory will remain:

rm img.gif

If all else fails, download all the files again (hint: tar+gz them to download them much faster), delete them from the website, reorganize them (more on that below), then reupload them.

Solving the root problem

One common solution is to create subdirectory structures for the first few characters in the filename. For example:

images/widget001.png --> images/w/i/widget001.png

You can then write a .htaccess RewriteRule so your web app doesn't break. It will still try to download the image from images/widget001.png, but the URL rewriting engine will serve up images/w/i/widget001.png instead.

You can create however many levels of subdirectories you need in order to get the number of files per directory down. This works especially well if the files have randomly-generated names. If all the names are similar (e.g., they all match the format "img#####.png"), you can create your directory structure based on some other part of the name, instead of using the first few letters.

NOTE: You should keep the full filename for easier future maintenance, rather than renaming it to images/w/i/dget001.png in the previous example. One reason is that it's much easier to flatten and rebuild the directory structure if you find out you need to deepen the directory structure again later.

EDIT: +1 to baraboom, who also mentioned the subdirectory+URL rewrite while I was writing my answer. :)

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