On Wed, 11 Dec 2002, Jason R Thorpe wrote:

> FWIW, I've been using drives > 4G since before 1.5 (with file systems > 4G
> as well)... so I'm a little puzzled as to what problems you're having.
>
> There *was* a problem with individual files > 2G (or > 4G, don't remember
> if the variable in question was signed or not) when UBC was first integrated,
> but those bugs were all fixed, and I now frequently use files *much* larger
> than 4G.
>
> This is not on a VAX, of course, but this is machine-independent code we're
> talking about.

I've certainly been running with >4GB filesystems under NetBSD/i386 for
quite some time.  This is the first time I've ever had the luxory of
being able to use large drives locally on one of my NetBSD/vax systems.
My first guess was that it had something to do with properly supporting
large SCSI disks, but based on John's experiences, I'm not really sure
what is happening.

I'll try to set aside some time this weekend to capture details about
the problem I saw moving back and forth between 1.5.3 and 1.6; I'll also
see if I can get 1.6 to misbehave by itself.

-brian.