Hi,
I'm not entirely sure NT (Win XP etc.) ever supported such a thing atop FAT32
either (via DOS calls).
Via DOS calls in NT? Not sure. But in ordinary operations, it was as
normal as pie. I remember pretty well that I had to cut up >4GiB files
into pieces so that we could transfer them on USB drives back in the day
to the odd person who used a Mac (no NTFS drivers back then), or to
someone who still used Windows 98.
Not sure I'd even want exFAT support in FreeDOS, personally. I'd prefer HPFS or
ext2 instead.
I said it before but I'll re-iterate - any filesystem with proper
journaling would be a total banger. I still remember how Rayman ate my
FreeDOS and I still have dosfsck in my fdauto as a preventative measure.
It's slow as molasses in January however. The same program under Linux
blows it out of the water.
BR,
Michał
W dniu 04.11.2023 o 01:04, Rugxulo via Freedos-user pisze:
Hi,
On Fri, Nov 3, 2023 at 12:31 PM Ralf Quint via Freedos-user
<freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
In which way is "FreeDOS" limited to 2GB sized files? (Sorry, never
bothered wit such large files on DOS (any DOS)? The file size entry in
the FAT32 directory entry is a 4 byte integer. As a filesize can't be
negative, this should be a UINT_32/unsigned long and thus allow for
files up to 4GB.
I'm not exactly sure, but I think 4 GB files were somewhat uncommon
(in DOS programs). And I'm not entirely sure NT (Win XP etc.) ever
supported such a thing atop FAT32 either (via DOS calls).
DJGPP 2.04 "beta" (and 2.05 "current") apps *should* work, but I don't
know for sure (ask Martin Stromberg). I do know that DJGPP's *nix file
utilities like "df" and "du" only use the corresponding FAT32 calls if
the DOS major version is reported as 7.
If the FAT32 enabled file functions of INT 21h do
handle this properly with a unsigned long, any program that does the
same and the programmer of an application didn't get lazy and just
assumes "signed long is big enough for everyone", then this should be a
problem of that application, not FreeDOS.
I believe it's something weird like int 21h, 716Ch is needed to create
the file. (Maybe ecm can chime in, I think we've had this conversation
before.)
If the respective routines in
the FreeDOS kernel do in fact handle the FAT32 file size entry as a
signed long, than this is a bug that needs to be fixed IMHO...
Yes, that's precisely the problem (according to Eric Auer, years ago).
FAT32 is free, but IIRC there a patents problems with other newer formats
FAT32 itself was never patented, it was the long file name format and
handling that was covered by patents, which by now have expired.
As of 2017, yes, supposedly the LFN patents are expired. The main
problem with LFNs (besides the fact that you don't *need* them half
the time) is that the DOS drivers (e.g. DOSLFN) are super slow.
exFAT is not really an extension like FAT12->FAT16->FAT32 where and doesn't
have such limitations, just doesn't have all that journal stuff that is
included in NTFS, which has become the standard file system ever since
Windows 2000 (and Microsoft intentionally limits the use/format of FAT32
partitions larger than 32GB).
Not sure I'd even want exFAT support in FreeDOS, personally. I'd
prefer HPFS or ext2 instead.
Disk size limit should be 8TB, just like with any other FAT32 implementation.
I still occasionally use a 128 GB USB jump drive with (only) FreeDOS
(FAT32) installed on my old (2010) Dell laptop without any obvious
problems. Granted, that's an older install (older 2041 kernel, older
stable shell 0.84-pre2 XMS_Swap).
In recent months I was writing a lot of Pascal code (ISO 7185 but 99%
TP compatible so that a simple script will let it compile either way).
But none of that needed large files at all. (I also typically test
atop a 200 MB FAT16 RAM disk.)
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