From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Apr 7 00:36:13 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 7354110656DD for ; Tue, 7 Apr 2009 00:36:13 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: from email1.allantgroup.com (email1.emsphone.com [199.67.51.115]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0FC158FC19 for ; Tue, 7 Apr 2009 00:36:12 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by email1.allantgroup.com (8.14.0/8.14.0) with ESMTP id n370aCSk015803 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Mon, 6 Apr 2009 19:36:12 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (smmsp@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dan.emsphone.com (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id n370aBAd064397 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Mon, 6 Apr 2009 19:36:12 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.14.3/8.14.3/Submit) id n370aAUT064396; Mon, 6 Apr 2009 19:36:10 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 19:36:10 -0500 From: Dan Nelson To: Bruce Cran Message-ID: <20090407003610.GG70541@dan.emsphone.com> References: <30D89A0A-A607-4513-AEA2-DB16A1609BDD@identry.com> <20090407005413.4c12d2b2@gluon.draftnet> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20090407005413.4c12d2b2@gluon.draftnet> X-OS: FreeBSD 7.1-STABLE User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.19 (2009-01-05) X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV version 0.94.1, clamav-milter version 0.94.1 on email1.allantgroup.com X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-2.0.2 (email1.allantgroup.com [199.67.51.78]); Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:36:12 -0500 (CDT) X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.45 Cc: John Almberg , 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: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:36:13 -0000 In the last episode (Apr 07), Bruce Cran said: > 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. I think you're referring to the maximum size of a file tar can store; the total size of a tarfile has no limit, since it's a streaming format. Each stored file is independant of previous or later files, and there is no summary file-list either in the front or at the end. -- Dan Nelson dnelson@allantgroup.com