largefiles vs nolargefiles

[sen_ux]

What is the internal difference between largefiles and nolargefiles. Why is it nolargefiles by default.?
Is there any problem in keeping largefiles while creating a filesystem.?Why there is an option.?

Thanks

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

nolargefiles means no file can be bigger than 2 GB.

This is a pretty low limit so with few exceptions, I include this option when I use newfs to make new file systems.

What happens with nolargefiles if an application tries to create or append a file to a size larger than 2 GB is an error.

SEP

[Fabio Ettore]

Hi,

the difference between nolargefiles and largefiles was already mentioned.
About your question, "why is it nolargefiles by default", I believe it was just a choice, there was no specific problem (this is my thought, but if someone has different information I'd be glad to know).

However I think it also depends on the version of vxfs is on the system. Read the following about VxFS 4.1:

http://www.docs.hp.com/en/5991-2762/5991-2762.pdf

â ¢ Other Base-VXFS Enhancements
..........
â The largefiles option is now the default file size option for the mount command and
mkfs command.


Vxfs 4.1 supports layout 6, if you have this layout on HP-UX 11.23 or 11.31 systems you'll have largefiles optione enabled by default.

Best regards,
Fabio

[Laurent Menase]

on vxfs or hfs you can change to largefiles with a
fsadm -F vxfs -o largefiles /dev......
or
fsadm -F hfs -o largefiles /dev......

I think it is there more for historical compatibility problems.

- and for compatibility with some commands like tar for instance

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

> What is the internal difference between largefiles and nolargefiles. Why is it nolargefiles by default.?

As Laurent said, I too believe that this is in keeping with pre-10.0 releases. Largefile support first appeared with HP-UX 10.20 :

http://docs.hp.com/en/940/lgfiles4.pdf

Is there any problem in keeping largefiles while creating a filesystem.?

No, not at all.

Why there is an option.?

Consider that you might want filesystems in which it isn't possible to create or copy a largefile (i.e. one > 2GB). Allowing you the option is simply a nice feature!

Regards!

...JRF...

[TTr]

> Why there is an option.?

There was a time when disks and volumes crossed the 2GB size and the need for largefiles support came about. HP-UX started supporting large disks/volumes/files via patches. In veritas the filesystem structure for smaller disks/volumes is different than that of larger disks.

During that time you could have servers at the same OS version that some did and some did not support largefiles. Also you could have in the SAME server, small and large disks, the small disks could NOT handle the largefiles option, the larger disks could. So the largefiles option was the only way to allow veritas to support the servers (with and without OS support and with small and large disks at the same time) during this transition period. Now that all servers have no need for the nolargefiles option, the largefiles is becoming the default and soon will probably be the standard and will not be an option anymore.

[Sunny123_1]

Hi

largefiles can support file more than 2Gb in nolargefile you are limited to 2Gb not more than that.


Regards
Sunny

[Hein van den Heuvel · Accepted solution]

>> What is the internal difference between largefiles and nolargefiles.

1-bit

>> Why is it nolargefiles by default.?

Because HP-UX development is extremely conservative.

>> Is there any problem in keeping largefiles while creating a filesystem.?

None. Absolutely zero, as long as the 'stat' structure has 64 bits to store the size

>> Why there is an option.?

To protect old & broken applications which are using 32 bit integer to store seek/tell information, or otherwise report on file size
s using 32 bit integers from 'accidently' running into files larger than they can handle.

See: http://docs.hp.com/en/940/lgfiles4.pdf

Hein

[dirk dierickx]

>> Why is it nolargefiles by default.?

Because HP-UX development is extremely conservative.


I had a good laugh about that one, so true...

[sen_ux]

thanks for all your answers.