file size limitation in linux?

[Mark J. Dulcey]

John Abreau wrote:
> "Mark J. Dulcey" <mark at buttery.org> writes:
> 
> 
>>First, you have to use a file system that supports larger files.
>>ext2 and ext3 have a file size limit of 2GB, so even if you got your
>>code to compile, it wouldn't help. 
> 
> 
> I've found that on RedHat 7.3 (I haven't checked on older releases) 
> the 2 GB limit exists for ext2, but not ext3. I've had video files 
> choke at 2 GB on an ext2 volume, and after running tune2fs -j /dev/hdd1 
> and remounting the volume as ext3, I've successfully written video files 
> up to 7 GB long. 

Interesting. Nothing I have read about ext3 led me to believe that it would handle larger files, and I haven't had occasion to try it myself. It's nice to know that there is another option. People running Red Hat (where ext3 is now the native filesystem) will be especially pleased; it's not as big a deal for SuSE fans, where ReiserFS is now the default.

The original question was about Red Hat 7.1, which didn't even include ext3 support; ext3 made its first appearance in 7.2. At the very least, you would need a newer kernel to use it with 7.1, and you would really want newer versions of the ext2 utilities (the new ones that support ext3) as well.