Unable to add large (1.74 GB) file to store on i686

[mhw@netris.org]

I'm currently staying at a place with a slow net connection, where it
takes several hours to download texlive-20140525-texmf.tar.xz (1.74 GB).
Several times in a row, the download has failed with:

  building of `/gnu/store/9cdy0640fxi0dr9fy29g6nr34qi79i81-texlive-20140525-texmf.tar.xz.drv' timed out after 3600 seconds of silence

Finally I decided to use 'wget' to download it, so that I could resume
partial transfers.  I have the entire file now, but all of my attempts
to add it to the store fail.  "guix download file:///path/to/file"
reports:

  guix download: error: sendfile: Broken pipe

I also attempted to add it using 'add-to-store', which exited the
process ungracefully without printing an error message:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
mhw:~/guix-core-updates$ ./pre-inst-env guile
GNU Guile 2.0.11
Copyright (C) 1995-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Guile comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `,show w'.
This program is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `,show c' for details.

Enter `,help' for help.
scheme@(guile-user)> ,use (guix)
scheme@(guile-user)> (define %store (open-connection))
scheme@(guile-user)> (add-to-store %store "texlive-20140525-texmf.tar.xz" #f "sha256" "/home/mhw/texlive-20140525-texmf.tar.xz")
mhw:~/guix-core-updates$ echo $?
141
mhw:~/guix-core-updates$ 
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Any ideas?  Does adding files to the store entail mapping them into
memory?

      Mark