Re: tar limitations?

["Scott M. Stone" <sstone@example.com>]

On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, ITSUMI ken-ichi wrote:

> From: Hector Akamine <akamine@example.com>
> Subject: tar limitations?
> Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 18:56:32 +0900
> Message-ID: <20010917184942.AE2B.AKAMINE@example.com>
> 
> akamine> Hi all,
> akamine> 
> akamine> Are there any limits in the size of files tar can handle? Does it depend
> akamine> on the amount of memory or any other parameter? I'm trying to do
> akamine> 
> akamine> tar -zcvf tarfile.tgz . > tarlog.txt
> akamine> 
> akamine> but when the size of the file becomes about 2GB, tar exits with an error
> akamine> message ("file too large" or something similar, the message was in
> akamine> japanese) (I have enough disk space for the file). It is strange since I
> akamine> am almost sure I have been able to create files larger than 2GB before.
> 
> It's  upper limit of kernel 2.[02].*  file size.  
> If you use kernel version 2.4.* ,you can easily byond such limitation.

I think glibc has something to say about it too, no?  IIRC 2.2 kernels on
the Alpha and such were able to do bigger than 2gb files, if they had the
right glibc build associated with them...  seems to me that if you had an
old system, say, a 2.0.37 kernel on a x86 architecture box, that dropping
in a 2.4 kernel w/o upgrading glibc might not do it..?

--------------------------
Scott M. Stone <sstone@example.com>
Director of Information Technology, Director of Research and Development
ITIsOpen, Inc. - http://www.itisopen.com
Cisco Certified Network Associate, Sun Solaris Certified Systems Administrator