[lug] File Size > 2G

[George Sexton]

This is just an educated guess, but a lot of the file operations return -1
to indicate an error. This is legacy issue of the standard C library. Many
of the calls i.e. fseek() have to return an error. What value can be used to
represent an error? If the standard return value is a positive number
indicating the current offset within the file, then the error must be
indicated by a negative number.

I don't know if the 64 bit versions of Linux address this issue.
Regrettably, the Alpha that I have doesn't have that much free space on it
so I can't test it.

George Sexton
MH Software, Inc.
Voice: 303 438 9585
Fax: 303 469 9679
URL: http://www.mhsoftware.com

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-admin at lug.boulder.co.us [mailto:lug-admin at lug.boulder.co.us]On
Behalf Of Kevin King
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2000 12:02 PM
To: Boulder LUG
Subject: [lug] File Size > 2G


Where can one find a patch (or is such a thing available) which allows Linux
to create and manage files exceeding 2G?  I'm using Caldera 2.2 and the file
just stops growing at 2G.

Also, if anyone wouldn't mind answering this: Why 2G?  I understand the math
with the max positive value of a signed int, but the question is "why
signed"?  Particularly given the various modes available w/ lseek, it would
seem that an unsigned quantity on a movable base might make more sense to
allow a file to grow beyond 2 or even 4G.

--Kevin
kevin at precisonline.com
http://www.precisonline.com
http://www.precisonline.com/gold.htm



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