core: check for unexpected long value return by pathconf()
(cherry picked from commit 2ba6d4ff2727031e7bca5d3d1da016bfe508b8df)
(cherry picked from commit 718692c6d402b6942e0b1e8ebd8e64b306813495)
(cherry picked from commit f123ebae553624525ca04d34ddd4c9453eac855a)