Re: TAR on large file systems (gt 2GB)

["Wes Bauske" <wsb paralleldata com>]

Wes Bauske wrote:
> 
> Chris Wedgwood wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 18, 1998 at 07:47:49AM +0000, Wes Bauske wrote:
> >
> > > I used "tar -cvf /dev/st0 ." in the appropriate directory
> > > so it never touches the file system on output.
> >
> > hmmm.... can you attach strace to this near the point where it barfs
> > (perhaps specify -v to the tar command and use ^S to stop at the
> > point where it normally breaks, attach strace, then ^Q) and show us
> > what strace says?
> >
> 
> If cpio doesn't fix it, I'll look at it further. Haven't
> had time to try it yet. Hopefully sometime today...
> 
> My guess is tar is keeping a running byte count somewhere
> in a 32 bit int. What happens is the tar just stops. It
> doesn't complete and it isn't writing any further data to
> the tape. Come to think of it, if I just build a tar with
> debug info, and attach when it stops, I should be able to
> see what went wrong...
> 

Update. cpio with archive type newc completes the output
stage and prints the proper number of blocks. This was for
about 2.5 GB of data. I'm reading the tape back now to see
if it's OK.

Also built tar with debug symbols to try see what's wrong.

So looks like it's possible to put more than 2GB on a tape
using system utilities.


Wes