apt fails on packages greater than 3.3GB in size

[msp3k]

I roll custom packages for use in-house to distribute software to machines. One package distributes the free-but-proprietary Intel software development suite. It is 3.7GB in size. When installing, I see the following error:

(Note that host and domain name information has been replaced with "<mydomain>".)

The following NEW packages will be installed:
  <mydomain>-intel-software-development-products
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 4 not upgraded.
Need to get 3,636 MB of archives.
After this operation, 12.9 GB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://<mydomain>/flagon/repositories/<mydomain>-proprietary/ stable/main <mydomain>-intel-software-development-products amd64 2011-3 [3,636 MB]
Fetched 3,636 MB in 1min 38s (36.8 MB/s)
E: Unable to seek ahead 3633241954
E: Prior errors apply to /var/cache/apt/archives/<mydomain>-intel-software-development-products_2011-3_amd64.deb
debconf: apt-extracttemplates failed: No such file or directory
Selecting previously unselected package <mydomain>-intel-software-development-products.
(Reading database ... 660705 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking <mydomain>-intel-software-development-products (from .../<mydomain>-intel-software-development-products_2011-3_amd64.deb) ...
Setting up <mydomain>-intel-software-development-products (2011-3) ...

Either apt and apt-extracttemplates should be able to handle packages of this size, or the package build tools should generate an error and refuse to allow the user to generate packages of this size to begin with. Either way, it seems to me to be a bug.

[msp3k (peek-nimbios)]

Addendum: The package payload seems to be installed correctly, and apt's exit code is 0. However, this is a simple package. It consists solely of payload data, with no install scripts, templates, menu entry, cron job, etc. Judging from the error message produced, I am guessing that if this package had contained template data, that part of the installation, at least, would have failed.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.