If all the 2GB problem is only about pg_dump may I suggest a work-around?
pg_dump | cat >dumpfile.sql
works without problems if "cat" is largefile-enabled; this puts the burden
of supplying largefile-enabled binaries on the operating system
distributor; similiar constructions work for all other postgres tools
Apart from this I think it is perfectly safe to enable largefile
compilation on linux unconditionally; the only major linux filesystem (I'm
discounting VFAT and the like here) that cannot handle files >2GB is NFSv2
(but NFSv3 works), the error code and signal you get from writing a too
large file (EFBIG "File too large" and SIGXFSZ "File size limit exceeded")
should give the administrator prominent hints what might be wrong
Note that in Debian Woody all system binaries (cp, cat etc.) are compiled
with largefile support enabled, I think this applies to all other
distributions as well
Regards
--
Helge Bahmann <bahmann@math.tu-freiberg.de> /| \__
The past: Smart users in front of dumb terminals /_|____\
_/\ | __)
$ ./configure \\ \|__/__|
checking whether build environment is sane... yes \\/___/ |
checking for AIX... no (we already did this) |