From owner-freebsd-questions  Sat Apr 14 11:56:13 2001
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Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 20:56:00 +0200
From: Gunnar Isaksson <sm5iuf@telia.com>
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To: Andrew Hesford <ajh3@chmod.ath.cx>
Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: FreeBSD filesystem limitations
References: <3AD80959.91CBE6C5@telia.com> <20010414102435.A91157@cec.wustl.edu>
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Andrew Hesford wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Apr 14, 2001 at 10:24:57AM +0200, Gunnar Isaksson wrote:
> > I have no memory of any filesize limitation on
> > FreeBSD and would like to know if there is anything
> > similar to the Linux 2GB limit?
> 
> Okay, after posting my last response, I found this interesting tidbit of
> information from http://www3.au.freebsd.org/FAQ/install.html:
> 
> The maximum theoretical filesystem size limitation is 2 gigablocks.
> Thus, with the default block size of 8K, this is 16TB. With a 4K block
> size (this is the smallest possible, I think) this works out to 8TB. In
> practice, there is a soft limit (I'm not sure what this means) of  1TB,
> although modifications can yield 4TB filesystems, which do exist.
> 
> The maximum file size on an FFS filesystem is approximately 1
> gigablocks, or half the maximum filesystem size. With the smallest
> possible block size (4K), this means you have 4TB files, and with a
> default 8K block size, you can get 8TB files.
> 
> I wonder how long it takes to dd one of those from /dev/urandom.
> 

Thanks Andrew for the info and your time.

The filesize limitation on 8TB has really escaped me since no
one talks about it. Nobody talks about a nonissue :-)

It really looks beneficial to switch my server into FreeBSD due
to this smarter filesystem.

I have strong and nice memories about the port collection in
FreeBSD. Just cd into /usr/ports/.. and then type make. Now when
having ADSL connection at home I should be able to marvel at the
ports collection again.

//Gunnar Isaksson

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