Comment 3 for bug 75574

This bug is simple to reproduce: create a large (>4GB) tar file and copy it to a VFAT partition (e.g. an iPod). cp dumps core.

Preferably cp should not waste the user's time copying only the first 4GB of the file before raising an error, but should check in advance whether the file size will be exceeded before it starts copying. It should never be necessary to override this behaviour, since a filesystem's file size limits are static (unlike, for example, its free space).