Samba mount and access large 2GB+ files from share or NAS device
Q. I’m using NAS server share to make a backup of my webserver. However samba is not allowing me to backup of large files (2GB+).
My Samba share mount command is as follows:
smbmount //nas1.domain.com/sharename /datanas -o username=LOGINNAME,password=LOGINPASSWORD
Now if I copy file called /var/log/httpd/access.log (which is 3.5 GB file):
cp /var/log/httpd/access.log /datanas
I get ab error - file size limit exceeded
How do I solve this problem and copy large files to NAS samba share?
A. Linux kernel use smbfs.ko/smbfs.o module and it does not support file sizes greater than 2 GB. This is well known problem.
Mount your NAS samba share with lfs (large file system) option. General syntax is as follows:
smbmount //Hostname/Username /local/mountpoint -o username=username,password=password,lfs
For example:
# smbmount //nas1.domain.com/sharename /datanas -o username=LOGINNAME,password=LOGINPASSWORD,lfs
Where,
- //nas1.domain.com/sharename : Server and Share name
- /datanas : Local mount point
- -o username=LOGINNAME,password=LOGINPASSWORD,lfs : Specify login, password and lfs options
Now you should be able to copy large files w/o a problem.
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Related Linux / UNIX FAQ:
- Howto: Adding share in samba server under Linux or UNIX
- Adding a user to a Samba (SMB) share
- How to use Linux as file server
- How do I find the current connections to a Samba server?
- Configure Samba to use domain accounts for authentication
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~ Last updated on: March 6, 2007
June 9th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Thank you for adding this information. It proved very helpful.
September 10th, 2007 at 1:40 am
Hey,
Well, I had been looking for this a long time. I don’t know why I never landed on this site before. But I am here and thank you for this post. Saves me a lot of trouble!
Leo
January 27th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Did you format the drive using the NTFS format? it sounds to me the drive is formatted as FAT32, which does not allow for files larger than 2GB
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
FAT32 allows files larger than 2GB, up to almost 4GB
“You cannot create a file larger than (2^32)-1 bytes (this is one byte less than 4 GB) on a FAT32 partition.”
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463/
also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat32#FAT32
March 4th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Hi, thanks!
Thats been very useful.
I was stuck at 2GB trying to rescue 60gb disk, writing to an NFTS partition mounted via SMBMOUNT.
Just one question. With this lfs option - is there any limits at all? i hope not