Once the size of the redhat.img file created reaches 2,147,483,647 bytes the installation fails with an anaconda error: Traceback (innermost last): File "/usr/bin/anaconda", line 342, in ? intf.run(todo, test = test) File "/usr/lib/anaconda/text.py", line 1165, in run rc = apply (step[1](), step[2]) File "/usr/lib/anaconda/text.py", line 702, in __call__ if todo.doInstall (): File "/tmp/updates/todo.py", line 1112, in doInstall self.fstab.mountFilesystems (self.instPath) File "/usr/lib/anaconda/fstab.py", line 428, in mountFilesystems isys.ddfile("/mnt/loophost/redhat.img", self.loopbackSize) File "/usr/lib/anaconda/isys.py", line 52, in ddfile _isys.ddfile(fd, megs) SystemError: (2, 'No such file or directory')
To be more clear, choosing a value greater than 2047 MB for the / filesystem fails.
Yes, this is because of the 2G partition size limit for DOS filesystems. So, basically this is a limitation of the underlying FAT32 filesystem and has nothing to do with the linux installation. We will have a limiter in the next release to prevent users from breaking this barrier . . . just didn't think about it for this release.
fat32 can be greater than 2G fat16 cannot