Issues with large files on nfs-mounted filesystems?

[Bart Silverstrim]

On Jun 3, 2004, at 7:16 AM, Kris Kennaway wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 11:42:40AM +0100, Jim Hatfield wrote:
>> I've made a large .mpg file on a Linux machine (because some
>> tools, such as mplex, are newer than available in FreeBSD ports).
>>
>> Here's a directory listing:
>>
>>> -rw-r--r--  1 jim users 4388444160 Jun  2 23:15 movie.mpg
>>
>> I want to burn it to DVD but the burner is on a BSD box, so
>> I nfs-mount the /home partition. However when I look at the
>> same file from FreeBSD 5.1 I get:
>>
>>> -rw-r--r--  1 jim  100  93476864 Jun  3 00:15 movie.mpg
>>
>> (yes I know there is a time zone issue. I haven't worked
>> out how to set it on Gentoo yet).
>>
>> The difference between the sizes is 4294967296, ie 2^32.
>>
>> Anyone know if this is an issue with the NFS implementations
>> or whether the NFS protocols have a 32-bit size limit?
>
> The mount_nfs manpage tells you:
>
>      -2      Use the NFS Version 2 protocol (the default is to try 
> version 3
>              first then version 2).  Note that NFS version 2 has a 
> file size
>              limit of 2 gigabytes.
>
> Linux used to, and maybe still does, have stability problems with
> NFSv3, so the default was/is to use NFSv2.  FreeBSD has no such
> problems :)

One quick workaround I'd suggest is scp if you have SSH working...

-Bart