Re: [gentoo-user] Ext3 FS File Size Limits

[Fast Turtle <fturtle@gmail.com>]

On Sun, 2 Jun 2013 13:01:22 +0000
Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 02, 2013 at 04:55:40AM -0700, Fast Turtle wrote:
> > I've been going around with this little problem for a while.
> 
> > I have several 30GB files I'm trying to restore from an NTFS formatted
> > external backup to an ext3 partition, yet every attempt has failed
> > right after 16GB of copying without fail or error message. They
> > silently failing and I'm stumped.
> 
> > One of the possible causes I've thought of was running out of innodes
> > but don't know how to check that or any of the other options used to
> > create the file system on - anyone want to help there?
> 
> > I've also decided to look at the mke2f.conf file in /etc and see some
> > default options being passed that may be causing the problems
> 
> > [defaults]
> > 	base_features = sparse_super,filetype,resize_inode,dir_index,ext_attr
> > 	default_mntopts = acl,user_xattr
> > 	enable_periodic_fsck = 0
> > 	blocksize = 4096
> > 	inode_size = 256
> > 	inode_ratio = 16384
> 
> > Normally I use either a 1024 for most everything due to the many small
> > files though for the partition I'm attempting to restore the files to,
> > I've used 2048 as a compromise due to the number of larger files
> > (music/videos) and critical backups from /etc
> 
> The wikipedia page on Ext3 says that with a 1kB blocksize, the maximum
> file size is 16GB, but with a 2kB blocksize it's 256GB.  Could it be
> you've somehow actually got a 1kB blocksize on the partition?
> 
> > I've also tried it with a default 4096 size on a 32GB ext2 formatted
> > flash drive but even then, it's failing at 16GB w/o any error message. 
> 
> Sounds like laziness on the part of the author of the copy program you're
> using.

if it is, then everyone is in trouble as it's the cp command - been part of *nix for many years

> 
> -- 
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
>