From: Theodore Tso Subject: Re: Possible ext2 bug with large sparse files? Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 09:56:06 -0400 Message-ID: <20070605135606.GE12755@thunk.org> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org To: Mark Knibbs Return-path: Received: from THUNK.ORG ([69.25.196.29]:43850 "EHLO thunker.thunk.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1761554AbXFEN4P (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Jun 2007 09:56:15 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ext4.vger.kernel.org On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 01:25:29PM +0100, Mark Knibbs wrote: > For whatever reason, it seems the maximum file size for that > partition is 17,247,252,480 bytes. In itself that behaviour isn't > necessarily a bug; but if you have any clue how the ext2 maximum file size > is related (or not) to the amount of free space or the volume size, please > let me know! You're using a filesystem with a 1k blocksize, and that's the cause of the limit. The maximum number of 1k blocks that can be addressed using the direct/indirect scheme is: 12 + 256 + 256*256 + 256*256*256 = 16843020 blocks or 16843020 blocks * 1024 bytes/block = 17,247,252,480 bytes Unless you are using a really tiny filesystem, you really don't want to be using 1k block sizes; in addition to imposing this 16GB file size limit, it also makes the filesystem much more inefficient for large files. Regards, - Ted