Re: Looking for a UNIX file system...

[mdw]

Even if files are limited to 2G, there's still a need
for the big lseek -- for fsck.  Actually, if one has
a database that really takes 8G, and a single flat
file is an acceptable solution,  there's probably no
real reason to keep it in a filesystem at all.  The
only reason one would buy more than 8G of disk would
be for all the indirect blocks to map the file -- which
in this case doesn't buy much.  It probably makes the most sense
to just put it out on its own raw disk, and access it directly.  After
all, it's not like one is likely to use commands like "cp", "wc",
or "/etc/dump" on such a huge file.  And the only real
choies here are "big lseek"'s on 32-bits or a true 64-bit
architecture.

                                -Marcus Watts
                                UM ITD RS Umich Systems Group