du: "Value too large for defined data type" for directories on 32-bit architectures (0.8.0 regression)

[BAMF0]

(Forwarded from Launchpad Bug #2148301)

Problem

The du utility generates a "Value too large for defined data type" error on 32-bit architectures when given a directory as an argument.

Reproduce

The error can be reproduced on a 64-bit system using the following steps:

1. Install qemu-system-i386:

# On a Debian derivative
sudo apt update && sudo apt install qemu-system-i386

2. Clone and cd uutils/coreutils:

git clone git@github.com:uutils/coreutils.git && cd coreutils

3. Add i686 as a target using rustup:

rustup target add i686-unknown-linux-gnu

4. Build coreutils for i686 (runs on i386)

cargo build --release --target=i686-unknown-linux-gnu

5. Run the built du on the coreutils repository directory:

qemu-i386 ./target/i686-unknown-linux-gnu/release/coreutils du

The error output is:

du: cannot read directory '.': Value too large for defined data type
4	.

---

The bug seems strictly related to directories, as running du on a single large testfile generated using:

dd if=/dev/zero of=testfile bs=1M count=4096

does not give the error:

$ qemu-i386 ./target/i686-unknown-linux-gnu/release/coreutils du ./testfile
4194308	testfile

System

• OS release: Ubuntu 26.04 (Development branch)
• uutils coreutils version: 0.8.0 (built from 4e68e674)

[iburaky2]

I used qemu-system-i386 and built uutils inside the vm and could not recreate this.

[BAMF0]

I used qemu-system-i386 and built uutils inside the vm and could not recreate this.

Did you install the version you built? Based on the image it seems like you are using the system's installation of uutils when it should be the compiled target binary.

[BAMF0]

Also, would you mind testing another time while following the "Reproduce" steps? I noticed you were using the debug target when the instructions mention building with --release. Uniform testing makes it easier to isolate the bug.