UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi

I did this command to tar the files but I got an error.
tar -cvpf filename.tar pathname/

It did tar the file filename.tar but then it gave me this error "Reach end of file before expected". The new tar file is about 2GB. So does that mean my tar file limit is 2GB? Is there a max limit for the number of files in the directory to tar?

How do I get around this? Do I just zip the files and then tar, after that untar and unzip?

many thanks!

you can't tar files > 2 GB in size and tar has a size limit of 2 GB
1. free up /tmp if its full. verify with df
2. change file limit to unlimted and relogin
3. An error occurred during reading/writing.
4. The maximum filesize for the output file in the target filesystem -
in case the target for tar is a file - has been reached. The maximum
fs for standard JFS is 2GB

Some hints
In case of reading:
do a
$ tar -tvf MyDevice
to verify that you can read all data

In case of writing try to write to /dev/null to verfiy that the
problem is related to the target device
$ tar -cvf - /myDir >/dev/null

Alternatively, just do a zip followed by compress
your output will be filename.zip.Z
uncompress and unzip .... try if it works...?

I compressed the files using:
gzip *
and then tar the file
tar -cvpf myTarFile.tgz *

But when I untar it gave me this error

tar -xvvzf myTarFile.tgz
tar: Not a recognized flag: z
Usage: tar -{c|r|t|u|x} [-BdFhilmopsvw]
[-Number] [-fFile]
[-bBlocks] [-S [Feet] [Feet @Density] [Blocksb]]
[-LInputList] [-NBlocks] [-C Directory] File ...

The system doesn't support untar?

You don't need the z flag. The files inside the tar are compressed not the tar.
Some versions of tar do support >2GB but it is non-standard extension.

okay so compress and then tar work, but it still > 2GB
Can I do 2 different tar files? if so how do I know which one is already in the first tar file when tar the second file?

Is there a way to see the list of files in the directory and tell it to tar the first 100 files to filename1.tar and then the next 200 files to filename2.tar ... and so on?

thanks