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

[Tom Woods]

You may know this already, but you can (and I do) tell ghost to split 
the image up into bite (not byte) sized files when you create it.  I 
typically break all of my ghost images into 690MB files just in case, 
for some unknown reason, I need to burn it off to CDs (or a DVD if the 
target system supports DVD).  Having said that, I try to keep my images 
as small as possible, so I've never made a 34GB image.

ghost -split 690 -auto -z9

That's what I use when I am going to create a ghost image.  The -auto 
makes it automatically change the file extention without asking for 
filename confirmation.  The -z9 forces the highest level of file 
compression.  If you've not been using -z9, and you're making 34GB 
images, you may be pleasantly surprised in the end-result.

Hope this helps you.  If not, maybe someone else will benefit.

Tom Woods



Tomm Lorenzin wrote:

>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
>
>
>  
>