tar

[Fadia Almarei]

Dear All
i know that the restriction for the tar command is 2GB , my question is that restriction depends on the media i do the backup in ,i mean that is this restriction deiffers if i do the backup on a tape or in the disk . speacially in the disk is there is more reston.

[Mark Grant]

It is a restriction is "tar" itself, it doesn't matter what you are trying to read from or write to. However, GNU tar gets around this problem as does using "pax".

[Fadia Almarei]

but i have a strange thing
i do the backup for a file it more than 2gb to the tape and it dose not give me problem .
but when i do the backup for the same file on the disk it give me a problem ,it seems to be a size problem

[Robert-Jan Goossens · Accepted solution]

Check if your filesystem has the largefiles option enabled.

onlinejfs installed

# fsadm /filesystem

Non Online jfs
# fsadm /dev/vg01/rlvol4
nomultifsets
largefiles

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[Mark Grant]

The 2GB problem is per individual file. The tar archive itself can be as big as you like. In your case, I would suggest that maybe you are writing a tar archive to a filesystem that has not been mounted with the "largefiles" option.

If it is a vxfs filesystem, it should have been created with "newfs" and the "-o largefiles" option and mounted in /etc/fstab with the "-o largefiles" options. If it was not created with largefile support, you can change it online, assuming you have OnlineJFS with "fsadm".

[Jose Mosquera]

Hi,

The restriction refers to the command and not to the media.

An option could be GNU tar (tar-1.13.25) from http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Gnu/tar-1.13.25/

Any other HP's native backup command will be useful for you, i.e: fbackup.

Of course, your disk definition mus be support largefiles. To check this feature:
#fstyp -v /dev/vgnn/filesystem
Take note about f_flag value, 16 indicate you that largefile option is available.

If you need activate largefile option in your filesystem:
#umount /filesystem_mount_point
#fsadm -F vxfs -o largefiles /dev/vgnn/[r]filesystem
#fstyp -v /dev/vgnn/filesystem|grep f_flag (chk new value)
#mount /dev/vgnn/filesystem /filesystem_mount_point

Rgds.

[Fadia Almarei]

i do the backup for a folder contanning many files some of them arge and others small some of them reach 1G , this mean that the tar command restrict the backup for each file individually

[Mark Grant]

Yes, it's the size of the individual file. If no file is greater than 2GB you won't have a problem. However, as mentioned above, if you are creating a file from your tar output that is greater than 2GB and you are creating this on a filesystem that does not have "largefiles" support, it will fail.

[Fadia Almarei]

i try to umount my file system but it does not work it gives me device busy , what would be the problem

[Mark Grant]

It means that something is accessing that filesystem. You can't unmount a filesystem that has a file open in it. The first thing to check is that you current working directory is not on the filesystem in question. After that, try "fuser -cu /filesyste,". It is usually good enough to tell you what processes are using the filesystem.

[Fadia Almarei]

it gives me the following , what is it mean

/u04: 13311c(root)

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

try
# ps -ef | grep 13311

should return the process.

[Fadia Almarei]

the process is /sbin/sh
could i kill it ?

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Beforeyou kill it do a
# cd /
# fuser -c /u04

could be you are on the filesystem, otherwise you could kill it.

[KapilRaj]

this is a shell (probably u started it) so come out of all the sessions and login again and try a umount.

Or else u can kill it

Kaps