HP-UX System Administrator's Guide: Routine Management Tasks

Managing Large Files
HP-UX supports large files (greater than 2 GB), however, when working with large
files be aware of these issues:
• You cannot perform interactive editing on large files. For example, if you try to
run vi on a large file, the following error message appears:
vi large_file
"large_file" Value too large to be stored in data type
• You cannot mail a large file.
• You cannot print a large file.
Creating a Large-Files File System
If you want a file system to support large files (greater than 2 GB), then large files must
be enabled.
HFS file systems
The default for HFS file systems is nolargefiles. To enable the use of large files,
you must explicitly enable this feature.
You can create a large-files file system using the mkfs command or the newfs
command.
VxFS file systems
The default for VxFS file systems is largefiles. To prevent the use of large files, you
must explicitly disable them for VxFS file systems.
In case the default changes in a future release, it is a good idea to explicitly set either
the largefiles or nolargefiles option when you create a file system. See
theexamples in the following sections.
Examples of Creating a Large Files File System
The following examples show different ways to create a large-files file system.
/usr/sbin/mkfs -F hfs -o largefiles /dev/vg02/rlvol1
/usr/sbin/newfs -F hfs -o largefiles /dev/vg02/rlvol1
/usr/sbin/mkfs -F vxfs -o largefiles /dev/vg02/rlvol1
/usr/sbin/newfs -F vxfs -o largefiles /dev/vg02/rlvol1
Examples of Creating a No-Large-Files File System
The following examples show different ways to create a file system that will not support
large files.
/usr/sbin/mkfs -F hfs -o nolargefiles /dev/vg02/rlvol1
/usr/sbin/newfs -F hfs -o nolargefiles /dev/vg02/rlvol1
116 Managing Systems