Smb or Windows network copy size problem

Giaguara

Chmod 760
Staff member
Mod
Argh. I need to download a file that is around 8 GB from an internal server that I can't change any settings of.

Can't do it from Mac side (running 10.4.10), as there is a bug with EMC-SNAS and Finder... I *can* connect using smbclient from Terminal, however there is still the problem that smb truncates the files to 2.66 GB... so the full file will not get to my local.

I tried from Windows several ways. The file downloads in full, but the downloaded file size is 2.66 GB, now 8 GB. Small difference, so surprise surprise the file does not work. On Windows side, I'm on XP, fs is NTFS.
I tried with some Windows download managers, and even these limit the size to around 2.8 GB.
I can't ftp, and I can't winscp to the server.

It does not matter which system I use to download the file, but I need to have it saved on the Mac in full. Any suggestions?
 
... as OS X deals with bugs, can't log to that server, and Windows seems to be limited to that 2.66 GB for some reason, I connected to the server from Ubuntu, and ssh'ed to the Mac on a different window, and now copying the file from that server to the mac... let's see if this works. (14 hours to go..)
 
Ubuntu also keeps timing out at a certain moment. No timeout settings from my side when connecting to the host OS X, so it's either something from the server, or something in the network that times out beyond my control. Timeouts have happened always between 1.7 GB and 3.2 GB.
Very frustrating also not being able to select the source to be on that server and destination on a ssh'ed volume in a download manager in Ubuntu...
Anyone got any suggestions left? Have someone burn the disk in location in California where the server resides and drop it in snail mail seems to be the best I can go for.
The file will not save any space even if it would be tipped or tarred.
 
A dumb solution would be to split the file into parts and reassemble it on the other end. You could use rar for example.
 
Ok, how do I split it? I don't have write access to the share the file is located at.
 
Actually, I don't think the idea of splitting the file makes sense.... So, this is just guessing. If for some reason copying a file as a file is going to be different than reading the bytes of the file, you could just try cat, e.g. cat /mnt/file > file, where /mnt/file is the file on the server and file is the copy you are creating.



I should have said it might be a solution. Also, I don't really understand the scenario. The file is on some server running what OS? And you've tried copying from a mounted file system to a windows machine and tried copying it to a mac via a 3rd linux machine. Did you try copying it to the mac from the server?

Anyway, to a unix machine you can try the split command (man split), e.g.:

split -a2 -b512m file filecopy

where "file" is the path to the file you are copying and "filecopy" is the prefix for the names of the split files, e.g.: if the source is called file the split files will be named like:

filecopyaa
filecopyab
filecopyac
...

The -a2 means use a 2 letter suffix, -b512m means 512 megabyte chunks.

If that works you can join them using cat, e.g.:

cat filecopy* > file

Or to a windows machine if you happen to have winrar or pkzip you could try using them and setting up splitting into files of a fixed size (look in the options for the program).
 
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