Files > 4GB
David E. Bernholdt
bernhold at qtp.ufl.edu
Sun Nov 11 03:14:16 AEST 1990
In article <1990Nov9.170337.9484 at onion.pdx.com> jeff at onion.pdx.com writes:
>Well, that would take one big disk :-) Unix files can not span physical disk
>partitions, at least on more common version of Unix. (Has anyone changed this?)
I think a lot of people (vendors) have worked on this one way or
another. One of the most common methods for "minisupers" is disk
striping, where several disks are combined into a single logical disk.
Take 4 x 1GB disks on 4 controllers and you have a big, fast disk 4GB
in size.
If you want something really big, make a RAID array of 1GB disks!
Also, IBM's AIX on our RS/6000 has a mechanism which allows all kinds
of manipulations of the disks into all sorts of logical partitions,
including spanning across physical drives. I think Sun has this too.
Perhaps others too...
Of course it still depends on the kernel if individual files can be > 4GB.
There are many users out there who really do need file systems larger
than a single drive & even files larger than a single drive. I'm sure
its only a matter of time...
--
David Bernholdt bernhold at qtp.ufl.edu
Quantum Theory Project bernhold at ufpine.bitnet
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611 904/392 6365
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