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

[Jim Ray]

the time it takes to move a 3 GB image across a network is about the 
same as the time it takes to make one over a network.  imaging to 
another local partition creates a self healing machine, though.  it 
would be cool to boot into that other partition and automagically 
restore the main system partition :-)

the key to speed in making the images is low overhead in tftp.  i still 
wanna tinker with knoppix and ssh since 5 min vs 20 min is a trivial 
difference in accounts with few PCs.

/jim

Tom Woods wrote:

> Jim,
>
> To be honest, I'm usually not patient enough to run ghost over the 
> network if I can avoid it.  Generally I make a FAT32 partition and 
> ghost to that directly and then burn/copy/move the image as 
> necessary.  When I have to image over the network, it's at the office 
> where we're running 100% Windows based file servers, so I haven't 
> tried ghosting to a samba box...  Thanks, now I have another project 
> to do.  :)  I'll probably set up a samba server at home, one of these 
> days, and see if I can ghost to it.
>
> I've used dd before, but it's been quite a while, and it was painfully 
> slow compared to ghost.  I would think that it's improved 
> significantly in the past two or three years, since I used it last.  I 
> also was a rank Linux beginner at that time, so I may have not been 
> set up real well.  At that point in time I hadn't even heard of 
> Knoppix (did they even exist back then?) so I was kind of on my own to 
> get it working.
>
> Take care,
>
> Tom Woods
>
> Jim Ray wrote:
>
>> yeah, samba puked hard for me on ghost images of any size.  what kind 
>> of production rate do you get with the compression algorithm 
>> running?  i usually do default 2 GB on winders and haven't tried the 
>> smaller size on samba.
>>
>> me thinks i'm gonna use jason's instructions on knoppix and dd next 
>> go around.  it would be cool to set up pxe boot to knoppix and not 
>> have to use a cd or ghost.
>>
>> Jim Ray, President
>> Neuse River Network, Inc.
>>
>> tel: 919-838-1672 x111
>> toll free: 800-617-7652
>> cell: 919-606-1772
>> http://www.Neuse.Net
>>
>> Ask about our Clean Technologies.  Established in the Carolinas 1997.
>>
>>
>>
>> Tom Woods wrote:
>>
>>> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  
>>>>
>>>
>