GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 342437
crash when copying large files to vfat
Last modified: 2010-04-09 11:14:19 UTC
Please describe the problem: I was copying a 7.7 Gb tar'd copy of my home dir to a fat32 file system and ended up with just a 4.0 Gb file on the target drive. Did the same thing in gnome-terminal and got the message (something like:) 'File size limit exceeded' (Swedish: "Begränsning av filstorlek överskriden"). Steps to reproduce: 1. Copy a large file to a file system with a file size limit usin nautilus 2. 3. Actual results: The file copies until file size limit is reached, then silently dies. Expected results: I would like to get a message telling me the operation wasn't successful. Does this happen every time? Yes Other information: The target file system was a lacie firewire drive, but it shouldn't matter since I successfully made a copy of the file to an ext2 partition on the same drive.
*** Bug 341784 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I can confirm this issue with nautilus 2.16.
*** Bug 402568 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I have filed the bug I found as a duplicate of this one, but in my case nautilus crashed instead of silently aborting and no data was copied, but a 0-byte file was present at the final location. This was executing a move operation.
*** Bug 365885 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
+ Trace 111817
Thread 20 (Thread 1090525520 (LWP 7631))
I did not get a crash, but (arguably worse), when I tried to copy several files, including a 7Gb file to a FAT32 partition (ironically enough as a backup on an external drive), it seemed that the copy worked. It was only when I did a subsequent diffs (being paranoid) to see if all the files had copied over, that I found the problem. Nautilus had truncated the file to 4Gb, but had not displayed any warnings or errors. This bug is serious as the user is led to think that the copy succeeded - but is left with a useless file. Kernel 2.6.15-28-686 Nautilus 2.14.3 Gnome 2.14.3 Ubuntu 6.06
Same problem with a 4,4GB files on fat32. Nautilus silently crash at 4 GB and didn't warn at any time that the copy was impossible. Gnome 2.20 Nautilus 2.20 Ubuntu 7.10
Same problem, original file size > 4GB copied to a vfat file system with nautilus --> file size = 4GB. No warning, the copying dialog simply crashed/closed. Ubutnu 7.10 2.6.22-14-generic, up-to-date installation. Gnome version: 2.20.1
Dear reporters, could you please try to reproduce this bug with Nautilus >= 2.22? Most of its I/O codebase has been rewritten and ported from gnome-vfs to GIO, so this might have been fixed as a result of the transition.
I run the test with nautilus 2.22.5.1 again, received no warning. The file I tried to copy was to large and stopped at 4G, but all nautilus windows where frozen and i needed to kill nautilus to have it working. So I can say the problem worse now.
Thanks for the follow-up, confirming with 2.22 then.
I would rather have a crashing file manager than one that acts as if the file was copied OK. So I actually prefer a complete freeze :) I can't understand that this isn't a bigger issue to the devs though.
I had exactly that problem today with Nautilus-2.26.0: I wanted to copy a 4.4GB file to a FAT32 formatted memory-stick. At 4.0GB the copy process got cancelled and an error message popped up telling me the file is to big or something similar. In fact this is not a real bug in nautilus rather a limitation of FAT32 or vfat file system. "The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GiB minus 1 byte (232−1 bytes)" (this is why there is exFAT or FAT64 now) So Nautilus should check the filesystem and it's supported filesizes before the copy process! (like the check if there is enough space) And Nautilus should tell the user in friendly words that that filesystem cannot manage files that big. Example: - User wants to copy a 1GB, and 2 5GB files onto a flashdrive - Nautilus should inform the user that 2 files cannot be copied because of the reason above - User clicks "Skip all" or something similar - copying starts and only the one 1GB file is copied.
I investigated this bug and found that problem is in gio. I have filed a bug including a patch that fixes the problem here https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=613923
Dmitry: could you confirm that the GIO patch fixes this issue for you? We can probably close this bug then.
*** Bug 604386 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 614614 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I confirm.
Closing then. Please reopen the bug if it's still somehow broken with GLib 2.24.x and Nautilus 2.30.x.