Tar Filesize Limitation

[Andrew Kaplan]

Hi there --

I am running HP-UX 11.11 and I wanted to know if the version of tar that comes with the OS can create or read tar files that are larger than two (2) gigabytes in size. The version that comes with 11.00 cannot, and I wanted to see if that has been resolved with the 11i version. Thanks.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Not w/o a patch; the latest is PHCO_28992; this will take you up to 8GB.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Andrew:

I'd also install PHCO_32438 for the 'tar' cousin 'pax' which enables 'pax' to handle up to 8GB files. Remember, you can use 'pax' to extract 'tar' archives with greater flexability.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Patrick Wallek]

Are you asking about tar archiving files that are greater than 2GB? OR are you asking if tar can create a tar-ball that is more than 2GB?

For the 1st question -- see Clay's response above.

For the 2nd question -- Yes, tar can create a tar-ball (tar file) greater than 2GB in size IF your filesystem supports large files.

# tar -cvf localfile.tar somedir somedir1 somedir2

In the above command the localfile.tar can grow to more than 2GB (again if your filesystem supports largefiles) BUT it can only back up files of up to 2GB (or 8GB if patched) within the somedir* directories.

[Bill Hassell]

You can patch tar to 8Gb but no more. So it is really a minor modification. For everything larger than 8Gb, you must use fbackup, download a version of GNUtar, or use a commercial backup program.