Re: how do I extract a 2.6 gigabyte .tar.gz file ?
On Tue, 27 Oct 1998, Gary L. Hennigan wrote:
[snip]
> | 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?
My experience with gzipped files is that if damaged, I can
just zcat the file and have an initial segment which is usable.
I made a test with a small tar file. It appears to me that tar files place
information about where the file is to be placed along with magic numbers
at the start of the file image in the tar file.
With regard to the need for all of a file to be intact to ungzip it: I
gzip'ed a small tar file, then destroyed the last half to see. I can tar
zxvf small.tgz - it correctly extracts all but the piece of file that is
damaged.
It seems reasonable that these observations will extrapolate. Somebody
else comment?
David.
Reply to: