Rebase triggers "git diff header lacks filename information" on very large patch with binary files

Hi,

I just did a rebase, and it throws an error like this:

Applying: comment1
Applying: comment2
Applying: comment3
Applying: comment4
Applying: patch_with_binary_files
fatal: git diff header lacks filename information when removing 1
leading pathname component (line 7330213)
Repository lacks necessary blobs to fall back on 3-way merge.
Cannot fall back to three-way merge.
Patch failed at 0005 patch_with_binary_files
The copy of the patch that failed is found in:
   /usr/local/git_tree/affiliate_data/.git/rebase-apply/patch

When you have resolved this problem, run "git rebase --continue". If you prefer to skip this patch, run "git rebase --skip" instead. To check out the original branch and stop rebasing, run "git rebase --abort".

The patch is very large, 882453899 bytes.

The patch also includes many binary files.

Extracting the content around and before line 7330213 and up to the next diff header in the patch I see this:

perl -lne'print "$.\t$_" if 7330169 .. 7330213' .git/rebase-apply/patch 7330169 diff --git a/dir1/dir2/file.png b/dir1/dir2/file.png 7330170 new file mode 100644 7330171 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..8a3219cb6545f23e3f7c61f058d82fc2c1bd9aac 7330172 GIT binary patch 7330173 literal 11301 7330174 zcmXYX1ymeO)Ai!+PH-nk@Zb{MHE3{$;O=gVh2Rd06MPp4?hxD|K!5<jEd=*(p7;Ov [more lines of binary removed] 7330213 zznckDs-GVJg-A0uD|ONvCQWVX;j!JNnkQI9^=+zJ^SvLe1p-~c&7bmY5wu4C=(8F0 [more lines of binary removed] 7330393 literal 0 7330394 HcmV?d00001 7330395 7330396 diff --git a/dir1/dir2/file.css b/dir1/dir2/file.css 7330397 new file mode 100644 7330398 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..75c8afc558424ea185c62b5a1c61ad6c32cddc21

I have munged the filenames.

It looks to me like git can't apply patches over a certain size.

Any suggestions on how to proceed here?

cheers, Yves