Re: Apache in pkgsrc has largefile support on?

[Chris Turner <c.turner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Granted, I don't think that many people were thinking in gigabytes
then, but:

http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/32VKern/usr/src/sys/h/param.h.html

and also:

      "To insure that it is possible to create files as large as 2^32
bytes with only two levels of indirection, the
minimum size of a file system block is 4096 bytes. The size of file system
blocks can be any power of two
greater than or equal to 4096." [1]

So I don't think Linux *invented* this UNIX(R)-ism, per-se -
although they might have copied it's behavior :)

HPUX11 requires that you specify 'mkfs -o largefiles / mount -o
largefiles' - and that was released in '98 fer some pretty beefy hardware..

but,:


    Of course, our lab used Berkeley Unix, as do all right-thinking
folks. East Coast people were said to be biased towards AT&T Unix, but
then, they hadn't discovered hot tubs either.
    [...]
    "We're watching someone who's never used Berkeley Unix." He sucked
in his breath and whispered, "A heathen." [2]


As true as ever, 20 years on, imho :)

--

[1] Marshall Kirk McKusick, William N. Joy, Samuel J. Leffler and Robert
S. Fabry. A Fast File System for UNIX. Technical Report Computer Systems
Research Group, Computer Science Division, Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley,
Berkeley, CA 94720.

[2] The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer
Espionage, Clifford Stoll, 1989, ISBN 0-7434-1146-3