This is what Tramp shows: -rw-r--r-- 1 root root -257853965 07-22 23:59 foo.log
same file from shell on the remote box: # ls -al -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 279016947 Jul 22 23:59 foo.log
When I opened the file, Tramp encoded it and brought it across and then "maximum buffer size exceeded" messages started spamming the minibuffer.
I had to kill the process as it didn't respond to C-g.
In GNU Emacs 22.1.50.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars) of 2007-07-17 on zzz.zzz.com Windowing system distributor `Colin Harrison', version
11.0.60900024 configured using `configure '--prefix=/zzz/usr''
Important settings: value of $LC_ALL: nil value of $LC_COLLATE: nil value of $LC_CTYPE: nil value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
value of $LC_MONETARY: nil value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil value of $LC_TIME: nil value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8 locale-coding-system: utf-8 default-enable-multibyte-characters: t
Major mode: Dired by name
Minor modes in effect: global-hl-line-mode: t shell-dirtrack-mode: t minibuffer-electric-default-mode: t cua-mode: t show-paren-mode: t global-auto-revert-mode: t which-function-mode: t
display-time-mode: t auto-image-file-mode: t dired-omit-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t font-lock-mode: t unify-8859-on-encoding-mode: t
utf-translate-cjk-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t column-number-mode: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t
Recent messages: tramp: Checking to see if encoding/decoding commands work on remote host...done
Omitting... (Nothing to omit) tramp: Sending the Perl script `tramp_directory_files_and_attributes'...done. tramp: Sending the Perl script `tramp_file_attributes'...done. Omitting... Omitted 1 line.
Mark set [2 times] Making completion list... [3 times] Loading emacsbug...done