Found the answer on SunSolve:
Document ID: ID50483
Synopsis: ADMIN: gzip, gunzip is not largefile aware in Solaris 8
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Keyword(s):gzip, gunzip, largefile, large file, too large
Applies to: Solaris 8 and earlier Solaris versions Last Updated: 2/12/2003
Problem Statement Top
ADMIN: /usr/bin/gzip, gunzip is not largefile aware in Solaris 8. Attempting to compress a file larger than 2Gb with gzip results in error: Value too large for defined data type Attempting to uncompress a file larger than 2GB with gunzip results in error: File too large The Solaris 8 version of gzip/gunzip is 1.2.4 which is not large file aware. See man largefile(5) for more details on which Solaris utilities are largefile aware and largefile safe. However, the Solaris 9 version of gzip/gunzip is 1.3 which IS largefile aware. The version of gzip can be seen with the command: On Solaris 8:
# gzip -V
gzip 1.2.4 (18 Aug 93)
On Solaris 9:
# gzip -V
gzip 1.3
Gzip 1.3 for Solaris 8 can be downloaded from:
http://sunfreeware.com Note: Software downloaded from sunfreeware.com is not supported by Sun. Note: gzip, gunzip was not bundled in Solaris 7 and earlier releases. Solaris 8 is the first version of Solaris to include gzip, gunzip.