Problem compressing tar file

Hi,

I have a 2GB tar file that I need to compress. I have tried gzip, zip,
and compress. With each one of these tools, I get errors when I
decompress. Is it that these tools cannot handle a file this large?
What can I do?

Any help is greatly appreciated,

Michael

Michael wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a 2GB tar file that I need to compress. I have tried gzip, zip,
> and compress. With each one of these tools, I get errors when I
> decompress. Is it that these tools cannot handle a file this large?
> What can I do?
>
> Any help is greatly appreciated,
>
> Michael
>

Michael,

I have no clue why you are having problems
with gzip, etc.

But, you can compress a tar ball with the tar command when you
create the ball. And, you can create REALLY big tar balls!

From the man page (man tar), check out the -j (bzip2)
and -z (zip) options. For example:

tar -zvcf MyTarBall.gz MyFileDirectory
tar -jvcf MyTarBall.bz2 MyFileDirectory

You can use any extension (bz2, gz, etc.) but
if others are going to use it, better stick to the
convention.

HTH,
-T

Michael wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a 2GB tar file that I need to compress. I have tried gzip, zip,
> and compress. With each one of these tools, I get errors when I
> decompress. Is it that these tools cannot handle a file this large?
> What can I do?

The previous suggestion of creating the compressed archive initially is
probably a good one. But you may run into the same problem again. A
large archive like that will use up a lot of space, both on the disk and
in RAM, while it is being compressed/uncompressed. If you have only
limited RAM space, add a temporary extra swapfile, then try again (and,
be prepared to wait, since if you have to swap large chunks of the file
out of real RAM, it will really slow down). It may be that the
compression/expansion will save the data in a temporary file, so you may
run into problems if you don't have enough /tmp space, and, of course,
you need enough space to write out the archive -- in addition to the
space taken up by the compressed one.

Of course, these are just guesses. A better guess would be helped by
the details of the error messages.

--

David L. Johnson

What is objectionable, and what is dangerous about extremists is not
that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant.
--Robert F. Kennedy