Re: tar issue on netbsd-5

[der Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> Not sure if this is mac68k related or not, but I don't have a tape
> drive on any other systems at the moment.

It's not.  I've added a Reply-To: naming just tech-userlevel.

> boobookitty: {10} tar -c mail
> tar: File is too long for ustar mail/rick

> The "rick" file is 17 gigabytes (17219386794).  Is this file too big
> for tar?

Yes.  The tar header format has a limit of 8GB-1, because it has a file
size field that's 11 octal digits.

This is one of the restrictions my tar uses a private header format to
lift.  (The private header type redefines the size field to be raw
80-bit binary, or perhaps it was 88-bit - I'd have to go check to be
sure of the details.)

> I thought that tar was replaced by pax so that we didn't have size
> limitations.  diff `which tar` `which pax` says they're they same.

It doesn't matter whether it's pax, tar, or something else; anything
writing standard tar format has this limit, because it's inherent to
the format.  You have to go outside standard tar format one way or
another to include files 8G or over.

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