sorting a BIG file

[Mike Schmelzer]

I'm trying to sort a large file (actually a stream)
that consists of 6 letters per line.

I'm running a Sparcstation 1+ SunOS 4.1 w/ 24M real memory
and ~75M swap space.

When I try to pipe this stream into sort(1), it eventually
dies with a '/: write failed, file system is full'
Thinking "aha! sort needs more scratch space!", I linked /tmp
to a partition with 48Meg free and ran sort again.

Now here's the tricky part: It still bombs with a write error
to '/'. Why?!? Does sort use something other than /tmp for
scratch space? If /tmp is soft-linked somewhere else, and that
runs out of room, does it get reported as a failure to write
to '/' rather than '/mnt/bigpartition' ?

Most importantly: How can I sort BIG files like this? I'm ready
to sacrifice speed to accomplish this. (I'm ready to sacrifice
*anything* to accomplish this, but that's another story.)

Please mail your reply, and I will post a summary.
Thanks!
--
==== Mike Schmelzer, UW Genetix, mjs at genetics.wisc.edu, (608)263-7459. ===
========= Schmelzer's Law: You can have anything you don't want. =========
================ "How can hatred uplift a race?" - 3rd Bass ==============