TGZ file with more than 2GB on RHEL inaccessible

[Srawan1]

Dear All,

I have my backup Server which is installed with Linux Red Hat AS 4 update 3. When I copy a file from my source system to the target system, the (.tgz)files which are more than 2GB of size it is unable to open.The error is permission denied.Whereas I looged as root and the permissions are also set to 777 to that file.But still have the same problem.Kindly let me know wht is the exact problem.

[Ivan Ferreira]

>>> When I copy a file from my source system to the target system


How do you copy the file from the source to the target system? Are both Systems Red Hat AS 4 Update 3?

[Srawan1]

Both the servers are RHEL 4 update 3, but Source server is HP and Target server is IBM.Used SFTP to transfer the files from source to target.Once the file is transferred unable to do any task on the file other than deletion of that file.

[Ivan Ferreira]

Check your gzip version, it looks like gzip cannot handle files larger than 2GB:

http://www.gzip.org/

"The beta version 1.3.3 already includes a sufficient patch; use this version if you have to handle files larger than 2 GB."

[Ivan Ferreira]

Another option is to try bzip2, the bzip2 page states that supports large files:

tar jcf file.tar.bz2 list_of_files

[Srawan1]

The source system and the target system using the same verion of the GZIP.There is no problem in the source system.As well I ahve another Development server with same configuration as Source there also the file doesn't have any problem.I could able to extract, as well compress.But I have problem only on the Backup server.All the OS version is Same and TAR and GZIP packages are also same.

[Stuart Browne]

What happens if you try opening things in pipes, rather than directly?

i.e.

gzip -cd < file.tgz | tar -tvf -

Do this on the source server before the copy, then again after you've copied it to ensure that the copy process it's self isn't breaking the file.

'md5sum' is your friend for that too.

All that being said, tar/gzip that comes with RHEL4 is quite capable of doing tar/gz files greater than 5GB. I double-checked this on an ES4 box fully patched (tar-1.14-12/gzip-1.3.3-16), and it didn't even bat an eyelid.