Large File Support In Linux - Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 SP2 - INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION Installation Manual

umsdos
vfat
ntfs

25.4 Large File Support in Linux

Originally, Linux supported a maximum file size of 2 GB. This was enough before the
explosion of multimedia and as long as no one tried to manipulate huge databases on
Linux. Becoming more and more important for server computing, the kernel and C li-
brary were modified to support file sizes larger than 2 GB when using a new set of in-
terfaces that applications must use. Today, almost all major file systems offer LFS
support, allowing you to perform high-end computing. Table 25.2, "Maximum Sizes
of File Systems (On-Disk Format)" (page 479) offers an overview of the current limita-
tions of Linux files and file systems.
Table 25.2 Maximum Sizes of File Systems (On-Disk Format)
File System
Ext2 or Ext3 (1 KB block size)
Ext2 or Ext3 (2 KB block size)
Ext2 or Ext3 (4 KB block size)
Ext2 or Ext3 (8 KB block size)
(systems with 8 KB pages, like
Alpha)
ReiserFS v3
UNIX on MSDOS: Applied on top of a normal fat file system,
achieves UNIX functionality (permissions, links, long file-
names) by creating special files.
Virtual FAT: Extension of the fat file system (supports long
filenames).
Windows NT file system, read-only.
File Size (Bytes)
34
2 (16 GB)
38
2 (256 GB)
41
2 (2 TB)
46
2 (64 TB)
46
2 (64 TB)
File System Size
(Bytes)
41
2 (2 TB)
43
2 (8 TB)
44
2 -4096 (16 TB-4096
Bytes)
45
2 (32 TB)
45
2 (32 TB)
File Systems in Linux 479