From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Apr 6 23:54:24 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 44AC31065827 for ; Mon, 6 Apr 2009 23:54:24 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bruce@cran.org.uk) Received: from muon.cran.org.uk (brucec-1-pt.tunnel.tserv4.nyc4.ipv6.he.net [IPv6:2001:470:1f06:c09::2]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 005D38FC1D for ; Mon, 6 Apr 2009 23:54:23 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bruce@cran.org.uk) Received: from muon.cran.org.uk (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by muon.cran.org.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4B24F19017; Tue, 7 Apr 2009 00:54:27 +0000 (GMT) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.5 (2008-06-10) on muon X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.6 required=8.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,NO_RELAYS autolearn=ham version=3.2.5 Received: from gluon.draftnet (unknown [IPv6:2a01:348:10f:0:240:f4ff:fe57:9871]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by muon.cran.org.uk (Postfix) with ESMTPSA; Tue, 7 Apr 2009 00:54:27 +0000 (GMT) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 00:54:13 +0100 From: Bruce Cran To: John Almberg Message-ID: <20090407005413.4c12d2b2@gluon.draftnet> In-Reply-To: <30D89A0A-A607-4513-AEA2-DB16A1609BDD@identry.com> References: <30D89A0A-A607-4513-AEA2-DB16A1609BDD@identry.com> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.7.1 (GTK+ 2.14.7; i386-portbld-freebsd7.2) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How big can a tar file get? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:54:24 -0000 On Mon, 6 Apr 2009 19:25:03 -0400 John Almberg wrote: > Because of a big problem I had this weekend, I need to do an > emergency backup. I'm basically just creating a tar file of my /home > directory. > > My question: how big can a file get on FreeBSD? This tar.gz file is > already 5G. Hard drive space is no problem, but as I'm watching this > file grow, I'm wondering if there is some file size limit that is > going to make this long backup abort. > > Naturally, that will happen when the backup is almost complete :-) With the default blocksize (16384) UFS2 can deal with files up to 128TB. However traditional tar only supports up to 8GB while the newer ustar format goes up to 64GB. It seems that at least on 7.x tar creates ustar archives by default. -- Bruce Cran