assuming i need to create a tar archive which would turn out to be bigger than 2gb, how could i segment the archive into say, 1 gb parts?

I am guessing that you have a 2GB file size restriction. Do you have a feature called Largefiles? I do on HPUX. Is it a possible to break out the data into smaller chunks?

I am not sure that tar has a feature like that.

However, do a search on this forum for other tar posts.

Off the top of my head I would say to try the command `split`. It allows you to break a file into chunks with a megabyte option. Might try something like :

Of course, this only works if the tar is on a filesystem and not on tape.

Of course, after I posted this response I got to thinking: "How would I recombine that split parts?" That's a good question and I am thinking about it..

Hmmmm.....

Yea Auswipe, I thought of that too, but didn't offer it. It would be fairly easy to split out the file but hard to concatenate it later.

I think that you can span tapes for tar though.

Try looking up info for spanning more than one tape...