In message <CD569DC8-6FFF-46D8-AFAA-F14D5D6F69DD@e18.physik.tu-muenchen.de>,Rol and Kuhn writes: >about 2.6GB dd told me "file too large". I thought that would be a >very strange limit, so I tried 'echo test >> bigfile', which did >nothing but burn CPU cycles. strace revealed that it keeps calling was your cache full?