Subject: Re: FYI: upgrading GNU tar
To: NetBSD Userlevel Technical Discussion List <tech-userlevel@netbsd.org>
From: Andrew Brown <atatat@atatdot.net>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 10/11/2002 18:19:01
>Ah, OK.  MAXBLK was increased in OpenBSD:
>
>   Revision 1.8, Sun Apr 6 06:11:14 1997 UTC (5 years, 6 months ago)
>   by millert
>   Branch: MAIN
>   CVS Tags: OPENBSD_2_1_BASE, OPENBSD_2_1
>   Changes since 1.7: +4 -3 lines
>
> Allow creation of archives with block sizes up to 64512 bytes
> but complain about non-portability if > 32256 bytes.
> Brought up by George Robbins <grr@shandakor.tharsis.com>

that just sounds a little wrong to me.  32256 is clearly 32768 - 512,
but 64512 isn't 512 less than 65536; it's 1024 smaller.  did someone
do their math wrong, is 65535 some number to be avoided, or does the
size of the tar header grow with the size of the block?  or is there
something else i'm missing?

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