Large File Problems in Modern Unices

david-currie writes "Freshmeat is running an article that talks about the problems with the support for large files under some operating systems, and possible ways of dealing with these problems. It's an interesting look into some of the kinds of less obvious problems that distro-compilers have to face."

Comments

Re:Why large files

[hbackert]

vmware uses files as virtual disks. 2GB would be a really, really small disk. UML does the same, using the loop device feature of Linux. Again, a filesystem in a file. Again, 2GB is not much. Simulating 20GB would need 10 files.

Feels like 64kbyte segments somehow...and I really don't want to have those back.

It will happen with time_t, too

[wowbagger]

We are seeing problems with off_t growing from 32 to 64 bits. We are also going to see this when we start going to a 64 bit time_t, as well (albeit not as badly - off_t is probably used more than time_t is.)

However, the pain is coming - remember we have only about 35 years before a 64 bit time_t is a MUST.

I'd like to see the major distro venders just "suck it up" and say "off_t and time_t are 64 bits. Get over it."

Sure, it will cause a great deal of disruption. So did the move from aout to elf, the move from libc to glibc, etc.

Let's just get it over with.

Funny...in AIX...

[cshuttle]

We don't have this problem-- 4 petabyte maximum file size 1 terabyte tested at present http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/aix/os/51spec.html

Re:BeOS Filesystem

[Yokaze]

Mine is bigger than yours :)

Linux XFS: 9 exabytes

Also supports extended attributes.