Cpio and Tar file sizes

[Darren Brown]

I have another question from a system admin within my company.

Is true what the manual states that both cpio and tar on HP-UX 11 have a 2GB file size limit.

If so is there any way round this?

[John Palmer]

Yes, it's been true since large file support was introduced in HP-UX version 10. Extract from /usr/share/doc/10.xRelNotes:-

Standards-conforming backup commands such as tar, cpio, ftio, and pax do not
support archiving files greater than 2GB. These commands have limitations
associated with standards and interoperability that prevents their support of large files. The manpages contain complete details.

Getting around the problem depends on what you are trying to do. There are other facilities for backup that do support large files. What do you want to do?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

Tar and cpio are old utilities and do not support files larger than 2GB. I would you something like fbackup.

...JRF...

[Stefan Farrelly]

using gnu tar will get around the 2GB limit. Havent heard of a gnu cpio command, possibly there is one.

[Tom Danzig]

fbackup is your best solution. No problem with files > 2GB. Configure through SAM or command line (man fbackup).

[James R. Ferguson]

Darren:

Another comment. As noted, neither tar (or its cousin, pax) nor cpio support files larger than 2GB. IN ADDITION, neither of these utilities support the archival of files that have user/group IDs greater than 60K. Files with user/group IDs that exceed this value are restored under the user/group ID of the current process. This may or may not be another issue to you.

...JRF...

[James R. Ferguson]

Darren:

Another comment. As noted, neither tar (or its cousin, pax) nor cpio support files larger than 2GB. IN ADDITION, neither of these utilities support the archival of files that have user/group IDs greater than 60K. Files with user/group IDs that exceed this value are restored under the user/group ID of the current process. This may or may not be another issue to you.

...JRF...