Tar command.. more queries

[Henry Chua]

Hi Guys,

Just to check.. is there a limited size in which tar command can be used to back up?

THank you for your kind advise!

[Ravi_8 · Accepted solution]

Hi

Normal tar would support upto 2GB. for larger file backup gnu tar is the better tool

[Ravi_8]

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Gnu/tar-1.14/

[Fred Ruffet]

Even with GNU tar, you may have problems with files larger than 2GB as long as it depends on fstat lib. If you have the problem with GNU tar, use a pipe as input for tar (no call to fstat).

Regards,

Fred

[Bharat Katkar]

Yes,
TAR doesn't support largefiles i.e. beyond 2 GB.

For that you either go with gnu version or use fbackup.

Regards,

[Sheriff Andy]

With patch PHCO_29229, its enhancement says that it can make tar backup files up to 8GB.

http://www2.itrc.hp.com/service/patch/patchDetail.do?BC=patch.breadcrumb.main|patch.breadcrumb.search|&patchid=PHCO_29229&context=hpux:800:11:00#Enhancement:

[A. Clay Stephenson]

If this is an HP-UX to HP-UX backup then you will be better advised to use fbackup/frecover. These utilities will handle files larger than 8GB BUT they are not portable beyond HP-UX. Gnu tar is probably your least evil option if you must cross platform boundaries. In the worst case you can use split (or bsplit) to divide files into 8GB or less chunks and then cat them back together.