Re: tar limitations?

[Tod McQuillin <devin@example.com>]

On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> >>>>> "Hector" == Hector Akamine <akamine@example.com> writes:
>
>     Hector> but when the size of the file becomes about 2GB
>
> Ie, 2^31 - 1 == MAXINT.  Get an Alpha or an Ultrasparc; fixing tar to
> use size_t's throughout isn't worth the aggravation when you need a
> >4GB file.  ;-)

The problem likely lies in trying to write a file larger than 2^31 bytes,
rather than in tar outputting that many bytes.  If it seems like there is
no difference, consider:

	tar cvf - . | gzip -c > file.tar.gz

In this case tar can output more than 2^31 bytes while the gzipped file
will likely be smaller.

This may be cheaper than getting an Alpha or Ultrasparc :-)
-- 
Tod McQuillin