AIX adheres to the "USTAR" standard. The 2GB limit was lifted with AIX 5.1, as shockneck pointed out. AIX 5.1 was out of software service 2005 or so - too long ago, in any case, to still use it in any conclusions. In fact, quoting from the tar man page for AIX 6.1:

Further, you can easily work around some limitations by using <stdin>/<stdout> as input/output destinations:

Code:

tar -cf - some_large_dir > /path/to/outfile.tar
cat /path/to/outfile.tar | tar -xf -

IMHO this is not a good way to do it. You change the OS by doing so and that is most probably not what you want. First, you will run into troubles when you update or apply corrective services, because the install routines of these procedures will expect "tar" (the executable, not some spurious link) to be found at "/usr/bin/tar", not at "/usr/bin/tar_". Second, you mislead tools which may rely on a certain behavior of the command they are using. These tools may or may not fail simply because they expect behavior X but experience behavior Y instead.

You may install any tar replacement either in a different location (/opt/gnutar-version/bin/tar if you think of it as an application, /usr/local/bin/tar if you think it is an additional administrative tool) and set your PATH accordingly (just put the part where GNU-tar resides in front of /usr/bin) or you can install GNU-tar under a different name ("gtar" for instance) and define an alias for your scripts and/or shells. But you should NEVER, NEVER EVER replace system commands with home-brewn concoctions.

I hope this helps.

bakunin