[TriLUG] question about 2 GB file size limitation in Linux

[Geoffrey Douglas Purdy]

I'm running into a problem analyzing large files ( > 2 GB ) under
Linux.  The analysis application fails with input files greater than 2
GB in size but works on input of 1.9 GB or less.  I hope to identify
whether the 2 GB limitation lies at the application level, in the ext2
filesystem, or the Linux kernel.

I can perform copy, cat, tail operations on files as large as 5 GB
without problems so I suspect that the limitation isn't the 2.4 kernel
or ext2, however I've seen a "2 GB file size limit in Linux" mentioned
frequently.  Does this limit refer only to older kernels?

My system is running RH7.1 (2.4.2-2 kernel) with the ext2 filesystem.

The error message generated by the application is the following.  The
application docs show "FileOpen" as a call to ANSI C "fopen":
NOTE: CoreLib [002.003] FileOpen("genomic_seq","r") failed

Can I safely chalk this up as an application issue, or might the Linux
kernel or fs be at fault?

Thanks,
Geoff