News Group Posts

2Gb file size limit

Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 16:59:10 -0500
From: Tony Lawrence <tony@aplawrence.com>
Subject: Re: tar and tgz size

mel wrote:
> 
> Hello there,
> 
> I've read somwhere that a tar file is limited to 2Gb. Is it true. What
> does it means. Is it only a tape limit or a software limit?
> 
> Does a tgz file is also limited?

Tape is only limited by how long it is and how dense the magnetic fields can be packed.

Dependent upon the OS and file system in use, an individual file and
sometimes even entire file systems can be limited to 2GB.   That's not
at all uncommon, in fact.   Nor is it unusual to have a file system that
may support terabytes but have individual files still stuck at 2GB.

When the OS and file system do support larger sizes, some utilities will
still have limitations just because they expected those limitations so
the programmer saw no need to store numbers in more bits.    Therefore
it is also not unusual to have an OS and FS that supports much larger
files and yet still find certain utilities that will fail if invoked on
files larger than 2GB.

Who knows how many years will pass before none of these limitations exist anywhere?

See Large File Support in Linux.`

--
Tony Lawrence
SCO/Linux Support Tips, How-To's, Tests and more: 

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