File Size Limits

[Victor Odhner]

I looked further and have received some education on file
size limits under GNU/Linux.  See notes below.  - Vic

Nathan England wrote in "Re: vmware":
> I still have yet to successfully copy anything over
> 2GB using dd. It always dies giving me a file size
> error.  I'll try again, maybe dd has been updated?
  
Vodhner replied:
> Your "file size error" may be a ulimit problem.  Try a
> ulimit -f command and see if your filesize limit is set
> to 2 GB.  If so, set it bigger . . .

I did a little googling on this just now, and ran into
other references to this "2 GB" problem with dd.
Apparently Linux used to have this limitation, and some
software needs to be compiled with "large file support"
to go beyond 2 GB.

Here's one from August 2001 that says some Reiserfs drivers
can't handle > 2.3 GB (32 bits, 2**31 bytes), and that ext2
could have problems about 3.7 GB.

http://archive.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/history/topic/170198-1.html

... this one specifies that Reiserfs should be v3.6 or better:

http://lalists.stanford.edu/lau/2002/07/0331.html

Here's one from late 2004 that says going from Linux
2.4.26 to 2.6 raised the limit to 4 GB:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=32959

One discussion refers to an NFS 2 limitation, overcome
by NFS 3.  Were you using NFS?

http://www.redhat.com/archives/rhn-users/2005-March/msg00038.html

Another one referred to a limit in Versions of ProFTPD prior
to 1.2.6rc1, fixed in newer versions:

http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/ProFTPD_2GB_file_size_limitation.html

... and a default limit in Samba, which supposedly can be
overcome with a command line option:

http://forum.s-t-d.org/viewtopic.php?pid=10106

This Windows-oriented discussion mentions that use of a
*signed* 32-bit integer limits some FAT32 operations to
2 GB.  FAT16 is limited to 2 GB.  I presume you're not using
FAT drivers, but I just found this interesting . . .

http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/printthread2100.html

Vic