1) I prefer bzip2 to gzip - seems to work better
2) gzip -t xxx.gz # test gzip file itself
Now, normal tar may not like a file larger than 2G and this may be your issue.
A program I recently learned about is GNU tar - needed it to unpack an archive, and I have packaged it for AIX at
http://dl.aixtools.net/tools/aixtool....1.26.0.0.I.xz
This is stored as an
xz archive, so you will need xz to unpack it, or also load xz for AIX from
http://dl.aixtools.net/tools/aixtool...owerpc.5.0.3.I
p.s. using xz to pack will take longer, but should be smaller.
p.p.s. gtar unpacks as /opt/bin/tar - so to have it as your default - change your PATH variable. Your post mentioned tar.1.14 - so I am guessing both are GNU tar, and mine is a newer version.
Hope this helps (and that I am not breaking any rules by posting to a place where I put things - if so, admins please be nice, I am not intending to break any rules)