Re: NetBSD tar and large files.

[Sad Clouds <cryintothebluesky%googlemail.com@localhost>]

On Fri, 10 Sep 2010 05:24:01 -0700
Andy Ruhl <acruhl%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 5:20 AM, Sad Clouds
> <cryintothebluesky%googlemail.com@localhost> wrote:
> > Any reason why NetBSD tar utility cannot create large files. I was
> > trying to archive about 4GB of data when I got this:
> >
> > tar: End of archive volume 1 reached
> > tar: ustar vol 1, 1695 files, 0 bytes read, 0 bytes written in 1946
> > secs (0 bytes/sec)
> >
> > I can fall back on GNU tar, but it's frustrating having to wait for
> > 30 minutes to archive data, just to find out tar "breaks" on large
> > files.
> 
> So a few questions:
> 
> 1. Did you test GNU tar, and it works?
> 
> 2. If not, maybe it's a ulimit or a filesystem limitation?
> 
> A code review might reveal the limitation, if it really is within
> NetBSD tar.
> 
> Andy

OK, I found out what was wrong, looks like GNU tar has much more
helpful error messages:

gtar: music.tar: Cannot write: No space left on device
gtar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

I had 7GB of free space on USB stick, but it's formated with FAT32
filesystem, so after tar creates 4GB file, the filesystem is full.

After digging around, looks like NetBSD tar uses ustar format, which
has file size limit of 8GB. This is still problematic, so my original
question stands. I have another music directory with more than 8GB of
data to back up, so NetBSD tar probably won't work.