Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 - INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION 11-05-2007, Installation Manual

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UNIX on MSDOS: Applied on top of a normal
fat
file system,
achieves UNIX functionality (permissions, links, long filenames)
by creating special files.
umsdos
Virtual FAT: Extension of the
fat
file system (supports long
filenames).
vfat
Windows NT file system, read-only.
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 477) 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 Size
(Bytes) File Size (Bytes) File System
2
41
(2 TB) 2
34
(16 GB) Ext2 or Ext3 (1 KB block size)
2
43
(8 TB) 2
38
(256 GB) Ext2 or Ext3 (2 KB block size)
2
43
-4096 (16 TB-4096
Bytes)
2
41
(2 TB) Ext2 or Ext3 (4 KB block size)
2
45
(32 TB) 2
46
(64 TB) Ext2 or Ext3 (8 KB block size)
(systems with 8 KB pages, like
Alpha)
2
45
(32 TB) 2
46
(64 TB) ReiserFS v3
File Systems in Linux 477