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Re: how do I extract a 2.6 gigabyte .tar.gz file ?



On 27 Oct 1998, Gary L. Hennigan wrote:

> Yikes! 

Yup :)

> I missed your original post. That's what I get for replying to you via
> someone else's reply and not reading the subject closely enough. Duh?
> 
> Where on earth did you store this file? I could've sworn the ext2fs
> had a 2GB/file limit on it? Certainly all the file utilities do. It

fat32 filesystem.

> has to do with the file pointers being 32-bit signed integers. Nothing
> that uses a libc call is going to be able to read beyond 2^31 bits
> (which is exactly 2GB) on a 80x86 based system, e.g.
> Pentium/PentiumII/386/486 based systems.

I figured it would be something very much like that.  Any chance of, say,
changing a variable definition from 32 bit signed to 64 bit signed, and
recompiling libc ?

> | You might think that it would sit there chewing on the file for a bit
> | before it got to some point beyond what it could deal with.  Nope.  Didn't
> | even start -- failed to even open the file up.
> 
> No, compressed files have to be read entirely before being
> uncompressed. Or at least that's a requirement of most compression
> schemes. Don't recall the exact reason though. Something about storing 
> the keys at the end of the file?

Well, I think more than that, the assignment of the pointer to the file
probably failed, before it even got to *try* to find the end of the file.

> | Any more ideas ?  :)
> 
> Only thing I can think of is getting access to a 64-bit machine,
> decompressing the file there, tarring the contents off to tape and
> then restoring them on your machine. Or at least putting them into
> sub-2GB chunks before taking them back.

Hmm, not very likely, unfortunately.  And even if I could get access to
one, it would be quite a bear to transfer the files back & forth....

> You might have some luck under Windows, though I have a deep suspicion
> that you'll get the same results?

That's what I'm guessing, but I still haven't gotten to try it.  Made a
brief attempt, but my hardware was not as cooperative as I'd hoped, so
I'll be trying again later.

Any chance I can split this thing into like, 2 pieces, and be able to
access half of it ?
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