[OSM-talk] planet file size limit

[David Earl]

Perhaps someone has already thought about this, but I notice that the
planet.osm file is 3.5Gb at the moment, so it won't be very long before it
reaches the 4Gb file size limit typical of many disks (e.g. FAT32 - i.e.
most USB hard disks) and things like compression programs will start to blow
up too (can bz2 files cope with a file > 4Gb?).

If not, perhaps it is worth thinking about what to do now, rather than when
it happens. Even if it can be stored at > 4Gb the chances are many tools
will fail. In any case, really big files are unwieldy on any system.

Perhaps partition it into separate (say 1Gb) xml files. It will be a long
time before the bz2 file gets too big when numerous of these files are
compressed into a single archive.

David