As meo suggested, this is the shell.  *csh exhibits this behavior (STILL!).
bash doesn't.  csh needs to be recompiled with large file support.  E.g. use
all the macros that redhat uses for default RPM compiles, such as:

        CFLAGS="-O2 -g -march=i686 -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_GNU_SOURCE"

Of course only the file_offset_bits matters here, but that's the line I get
for default RPM compiles.  Personally, I don't use *csh, so I don't care.
But someone might want to create an SL_ rpm to replace tcsh :)

I seem to recall that children of tcsh were also affected.  To download a
large file, try changing your login shell to bash, logout and back in, then
run wget.

Dan W.

On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 03:41:22AM -0500, Stefano Stalio wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 01:45:21 +0100, Alan J. Flavell
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >On Fri, 1 Oct 2004, csieh wrote:
> >
> >> Stefano,
> >>
> >> I create files that big all the time.
> >
> >I had no problem creating such files with e.g the tar command,
> >
> >But when I tried piping program output with e.g >>file.name ,
> >it expired at the 2GB boundary.  Is this perhaps a limitation
> >in the shell, rather than in the filesystem itself?
> >
> >cheers
>
> Alan,
>
> you are right, I can create big (>2Gb) files using the tar command
> and create big ISO images for dvd writing,
> but, as you said, I can not create files bigger than 2Gb
> piping program output to a file ( ./program > file.name )
> and I can not download a DVD iso image bigger than 2Gb ( i tried
> both wget and mozilla). So it must be application-dependent.

--
-- Daniel Widyono                      http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~widyono
-- Liniac Project,     CIS Dept.,    SEAS,    University of Pennsylvania
-- Mail: CIS Dept, 302 Levine     3330 Walnut St  Philadelphia, PA 19104