Re: making multi file archive

[mp <mparson%bl.org@localhost>]

On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, George Georgalis wrote:
> I had thought tar would accept an argument to make a
> "multi tape archive" but I'm not seeing it.
>
> What I would like to happen is produce multiple tar
> bzip2 archives of a 14 Gb directory structure each being
> small enough to fit on a dvd. The archives should be
> independent and not requiring the others for extraction
> (typically only one file will be drawn and we don't want
> to require reassembly of the entire 14 Gb to get it.)
>
> Obviously one big trick here is calculating archive size
> before compression and determining which files go in
> which archives.
>
> Is there some way to do this?

From skimming the man page for tar, I don't see anythign that will do
that, but if you take a look at pax and its -B flag, you might be able
to get what you're looking for.

--
Michael Parson
mparson%bl.org@localhost