Re: [PLUG] Moveing large files

[Bill Jonas <bill@billjonas.com>]

On Thu, Apr 04, 2002 at 10:45:10AM -0500, Doug Crompton wrote:
> Why does this restriction exist? It seems crazy with gigabit networks and
> the big (usually video) files we deal with today. I don't think this
> exists with windows. I am sure I have moved big files with Win2K. Would
> Samba do it?

It exists if you're on a 32-bit machine:

2^31 = 2147483648 bytes
2147483648 bytes/1048576 bytes/megabyte = 2048 megabytes, or 2 gigabytes.

(The reason it's 2^31 and not 2^32 is because filesize is a signed
value, so that a negative number can be returned on error.)

I forget which kernel revision, but the kernel now supports large files.
So does glibc.  Some userspace applications do and some do not.

For reference, when we finally all move to 64-bit systems, we'll have
the following limitation:

2^63 = 9223372036854775808 bytes
9223372036854775808 bytes/1048576 bytes/megabyte = 8796093022208 MB
8796093022208 MB/1048576 MB/terabyte = 8388608 TB
8388608 TB/1048576 TB/exabyte = 8 EB

On a 64-bit system, you'll be limited to files of eight exabytes in
size, without using any special workarounds.  Which ought to be enough
for anybody...

-- 
Bill Jonas    *    bill@billjonas.com    *    http://www.billjonas.com/

Developer/SysAdmin for hire!   See http://www.billjonas.com/resume.html

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