large file download problems
 

I am trying to download the Knoppix 4.0 DVD, which is listed as 3246396 KB

The download manager in Galeon or Firefox reports the file size as 2048MB - and stops at that point. I can't seem to download the full file!

Is there any reason why this should happen - filesystem is ext3? The other partition is FAT32 with Windows, but ext3 should be OK for big files unless the FAT32 on the other partition has some relevance. I am using Mandrake(Mandriva) 2005LE.

Any ideas?

Jim

I don't think that your file system is the problem, but rather Galeon/Firefox, which seem to treat the file size as a signed 32-bit Integer => the maximum file size for them is 2^31 - 1 which is about 2 GiB.

Thanks, sounds possible - So what do I do about it? Use an ftp client, or another browser? How do you download big files, and why doesn't Mozilla recognise big files - after all, 2 GB is large, but not unusual?

Jim

Thanks.

I used an ftp client, worked fine. Interesting "feature", the browsers only supporting 2GB filesize!

Jim

As an alternative you could buy a 64-bit processor; the browsers for that platform will probably be able to download files larger than 2 GiB :D But you're right, it's very shortsighted to restrict file size.

You can always try BitTorrent.