max file size for tar

From: Susan Rodriguez <SUSROD_at_HBSI.COM>
Date: Wed, 04 Mar 1998 18:09:29 -0800

Managers,

I am installing DEC patch c970426-1401.tar.Z to fix a problem with the
tar utility. The readme file indicates that the patch will cause tar to
handle files greater that 4 GB correctly and also seems to imply that
the max size of a tar file is 8 GB.

Excerpt from README:

Modify tar to correctly handle a file whose size exceeds 4GB.
Previously, this
would quietly cause corruption of the fileheader, thus producing a
useless
tarset (a tar extract would not be able to read the tarset).
Additionally
added code to detect attempts to exceed the maximum size of a file (8GB
as
described by the tar fileheader), and to warn when it is necessary to
truncate
a file that is too large.


Am I reading this correctly? Is 8 GB really as big as you can get with
tar? What about gnutar? Does it suffer the same limitation?

I have to have a tool which can write individual files of up to 16 GB to
tape. If tar is not the answer, I would appreciate any suggestions.

TIA,



susrod_at_hbsi.com

- consistency is the defense of a small mind
Received on Thu Mar 05 1998 - 03:09:20 NZDT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Wed Nov 08 2023 - 11:53:37 NZDT