[TriLUG] linux/windoze Interoperability NOTE: 4 GB VFat filesize limit

[Tomm Lorenzin]

SUBJECT: errmsg "The file protocol process died unexpectedly"

Hope this hermaphrodite/SaMBa-network issue saves someone some of the
head-scratching that I have been through for the past 24 hours.

I have been having a problem xferring a 34GB "Norton Ghost" image from
my personal-networked FC3 RAIDed backup server to my USB2 portable
Maxtor 200GB HD. In several tries, the process always fails in the same
manner, i.e., the errmsg below shows up and a truncated 4GB file is all
that is present on the Maxtor despite bow-koo free space.

BTW... the process also died in exactly the same manner when I tried to
write the file to the Maxtor over the network while the portable was
connected to the FC3 system. This more-or-less exonerated linux. The
errmsg was just linux's voicing of the problem 'cuz that's where we were
hooked up.  I'll bet (but I haven't tried yet) that I'll get a similar -
tho prolly more cryptic - errmsg from windoze xpee when I try to do the
same when directly connected to the wxpee machine. 

Paraphrased form the wwweb:

"VFAT has a file size limit of 4GB. That would explain the download or
file-transfer corrupting or quitting at 4GB.  This would not happen if
the maxtor was formatted as an ext3 partition."

This explains why:

1. when Ghosting directly to the 200GB Maxtor from Windoze (as ususal) -
and NOT to a separate NTFS partition, Ghost - unbidden - breaks the
ghost image into separate 4GB blocks - NOT so that they can be written
to DVDs as previously surmised, and 

2, This is why xferring a large (>4GB) file to the Maxtor (VFat by
intersystem compatibility necessity) from FC3 fails when reaching 4GB
with the errmsg:

"The file protocol process died unexpectedly"

(NTFS - like ext3 - has no such 4GB filesize limit.  There may be one,
but I don't know where (in filesize) it is, and I don't wanna know. 7;^D