[TriLUG] backups revisted

[John Franklin]

On Friday, May 3, 2002, at 10:06 PM, JoJo Almario wrote:

> Yeah that’s what I was looking for.  Are there any file size limits to
> tar though?

Only if you have a hard drive the size of Raleigh.

The tar format is block based.  Each file in the tarball has a header 
block that contains the file's name, timestamps, permissions and 
whatnot.  The header is followed by blocks of the file's data with the 
last block padded to fill the block.  Next header, next data, next 
header, next data.  There's no limit in the tar format for the size of 
the tarball, though each individual file is limited to 96-bits of size 
or roughly sixty-four thousand yottabytes.

jf
--
John Franklin
franklin at elfie.org
ICBM: 35°43'56"N 78°53'27"W