Re: 2G file size limitation question
Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Thu, 8 Jan 1998 00:21:43 +0000 (GMT)
> 32-bit byte offset field, but it could easily be made a 32-bit "sector"
> offset, for example, giving you 41 bits to play with. It could also be
> a 32-bit "page" offset, at which time you have 44 bits covered, but then
> you couldn't do 1kB-aligned file mappings any more (and those are used
> by some older binary formats).
The problem is given 64bits people will do sparse 64bit files. Really we
need to put 64bit values in the page cache, yet not take a performance hit
from this. It's also potentially only 40bits for people doing 512 byte
blocks on arbitary alignments.
Alan