unable to compress file > 4GB using "compress command"

[Ridzuan Zakaria]

Hi,

I am trying to compress an Oracle export file (*.dmp) which size is 6GB. The compress command failed with "Memory fault".

This is my enviroment info:
$ uname -a
Linux 2.4.21-9.ELsmp #1 SMP Thu Jan 8 17:08:56 EST 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 3 (Taroon Update 1)
Kernel 2.4.21-9.ELsmp on an i686

Thanks.

[Ivan Ferreira]

That may be a limitation of the compress command. You should use gzip which gives you a better compression ratio (using more cpu).

Also, gzip is available for most UNIX distributions.

You can also tune the compression ratio, to use less cpu, and use nice to reduce the priority.

[Rick Garland]

Linux does not has the 'compress' by default, at least in the RH/Fedora.

Use '/bin/gzip' or '/usr/bin/zip'

These handle large files.

[Arunvijai_4]

There is a known limitation in compress. You have to use gzip or bzip2 ..

-Arun

[Andrea Rossi]

try making a pipe:
mknod -p /u01/oradata/impexp
etc etc