[lug] File size limit issue

[Anders Knudsen]

OK. Quick bg. Working to replace my main file server, which is NT, 
with linux. It's a dell p-edge, raid, and all that fancy shoot. No probs 
getting linux up on it. So. To "proof of concept" to the 
"management" <cringe> I had to create a "mirror" server, get it up 
and running, get folks using it, see that from a users NT 
workstation that it worked as well (better), etc., etc.
Now. All is well. NFS, NIS, samba, all working, np. However, the 
file server is used for running design simulations. It happens that 
sometimes...probably more often than it should...folks create 2GB 
plus log/dump files. You see my dilemma now?
On the NT server, you can go hog wild and create huge files if you 
want. These are of-course temporary files.
The linux server, however, stops writing the file at 2GB.
I did a quick test.

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=testfile bs=16k count=134217728
dd: writing `testfile': File too large
131072+0 records in
131071+0 records out
$ ls -l
-rw-rw-r--    1 aknudsen aknudsen 2147483647 Nov 17 16:04 testfile

Bah! This sucks. I'm running RH7.0, all patched up, 2.2.16 kernel.

I found some old mail in archives with same question, but no 
answers :) So I'm querying the list here. Any ideas?
No way I'll be able to replace the NT file server with linux unless I 
can break this 2Gb barrier by a long shot.
I found a possible solution, a kernel patch, called REISERFS.
see www.namesys.com
Anyone have any exp with this? There's got to be others using 
linux and having to create files larger than 2gb, no?

So, again, I'm really bummed I ran into this situation, since it looks 
like a kernel patch is the only way to fix. Will 2.4 kernel be fixing 
this?

...steps off podium as the crowd ponders...

TIA, <Anders>