Maximum size of one table

Started by Jonas Lindholmabout 25 years ago7 messagesgeneral
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#1Jonas Lindholm
jonas.lindholm@omgroup.com

Can a table grow larger than maximum file size ?
E.g. will PG create an additional file for the table ?

I'm running PG 7.0.3 on Linux where the maximum file size is 2GB

Thanks
/Jonas Lindholm

#2(J.H.M. Dassen \(Ray\))
jdassen@cistron.nl
In reply to: Jonas Lindholm (#1)
Re: Maximum size of one table

Jonas Lindholm <jonas.lindholm@omgroup.com> wrote:

I'm running PG 7.0.3 on Linux where the maximum file size is 2GB

That's somewhat misleading. It's more accurate to state that GNU/Linux on
32bit architectures, for some combinations of kernel and C library, has a
maximum file size of 2GB.

Your options to have >2Gb files on GNU/Linux therefore include
- switching to a 64bit platform, say Alpha, Itanic or PowerPC64 or
- switching to a recent (>= 2.1) version of the GNU C library and a recent
(e.g. 2.4.x) kernel.

HTH,
Ray
--
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#3Poul L. Christiansen
poulc@cs.auc.dk
In reply to: Jonas Lindholm (#1)
Re: Maximum size of one table

PG will split the table into several files, to avoid the 2GB limit.

But you might run into problems if you do a pg_dump and the output is >
2GB. The workaround is to use "gzip" and "split" or you could upgrade to
the newest kernel 2.4, which AFAIK doesn't have the 2GB limit.

Poul L. Christiansen

Jonas Lindholm wrote:

Show quoted text

Can a table grow larger than maximum file size ?
E.g. will PG create an additional file for the table ?

I'm running PG 7.0.3 on Linux where the maximum file size is 2GB

Thanks
/Jonas Lindholm

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#4Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: (J.H.M. Dassen \(Ray\)) (#2)
Re: Re: Maximum size of one table

jdassen@cistron.nl (J.H.M. Dassen (Ray)) writes:

Your options to have >2Gb files on GNU/Linux therefore include
- switching to a 64bit platform, say Alpha, Itanic or PowerPC64 or
- switching to a recent (>= 2.1) version of the GNU C library and a recent
(e.g. 2.4.x) kernel.

However, this is all irrelevant to Jonas' question, which is whether
he needs to worry about it for Postgres. He doesn't. PG splits large
tables into gigabyte-sized chunks to avoid OS file size limitations.

regards, tom lane

#5Brent R. Matzelle
bmatzelle@yahoo.com
In reply to: Jonas Lindholm (#1)
Re: Maximum size of one table
--- Jonas Lindholm <jonas.lindholm@omgroup.com> wrote:

Can a table grow larger than maximum file size ?
E.g. will PG create an additional file for the table ?

I'm running PG 7.0.3 on Linux where the maximum file size is
2GB

The new Linux 2.4 kernel has blown away that file size barrier.
The new Large File Support (LFS) can now handle a monstrous 16
terabytes. I compiled and have been running it on RedHat 7.0
for a couple months now. The new kernel will also be included
in the upcoming 7.1 (Fisher) release of RedHat.

Brent

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#6Chris Jones
chris@mt.sri.com
In reply to: Brent R. Matzelle (#5)
Re: Maximum size of one table

On Wed, Mar 14, 2001 at 08:35:08AM -0800, Brent R. Matzelle wrote:

The new Linux 2.4 kernel has blown away that file size barrier.
The new Large File Support (LFS) can now handle a monstrous 16
terabytes. I compiled and have been running it on RedHat 7.0
for a couple months now. The new kernel will also be included
in the upcoming 7.1 (Fisher) release of RedHat.

Or you can use NetBSD, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD, which have had 64-bit
filesystems for years now.

Chris

--
chris@mt.sri.com -----------------------------------------------------
Chris Jones SRI International, Inc.
www.sri.com

#7Jonas Lindholm
jonas.lindholm@omgroup.com
In reply to: Tom Lane (#4)
Re: Re: Maximum size of one table

Thanks, good news.

I'm also pleased to know that the file size limit has been removed with LFS
on Linux 2.4 and I'll give it a try.

/Jonas L.

"Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote in message
news:25370.984585704@sss.pgh.pa.us...

jdassen@cistron.nl (J.H.M. Dassen (Ray)) writes:

Your options to have >2Gb files on GNU/Linux therefore include
- switching to a 64bit platform, say Alpha, Itanic or PowerPC64 or
- switching to a recent (>= 2.1) version of the GNU C library and a

recent

Show quoted text

(e.g. 2.4.x) kernel.

However, this is all irrelevant to Jonas' question, which is whether
he needs to worry about it for Postgres. He doesn't. PG splits large
tables into gigabyte-sized chunks to avoid OS file size limitations.

regards, tom lane

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