Performing Large Sorts in SPSS
Performing Large Sorts in SPSS -- Work Space Considerations
In the current Release of SPSS Under UNIX, scratch (temporary)
files used during the sorting of data are written to and stored
in the directory where SPSS was invoked, not in the workspace
used for other scratch files (which by default is /usr/tmp).
This means that if you invoke SPSS in your own home directory or
one of your subdirectories, any sort you can perform is limited
by the space available to your quota. To circumvent this
problem, SPSS can be invoked from /tmp or any similar
temporary space available. (To see what's available,
type ls /tmp*). This way SPSS can use the large space of /tmp
or /tmp1 for its sort scratch files. To do this, type
then invoke SPSS as usual. Note that whenever you use external
program or data files in this situation, you will have to specify
them in your SPSS program with the full path name beginning with
/home unless they have been copied to /tmp or /tmp1 before you
invoke SPSS. Remember to delete files from /tmp or /tmp1 when
you are finished, to free this public space for other users.