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!!Multiple Tar Files

Sometimes it is necessary to split a tar archive over several volumes, or files.

If you specify several archive files, tar will use them in the order given. Try something like this:

 tar -c -L 50000 -f archive1 -f archive2 -f archive3 ... path

Be sure to specify enough archive files to hold the entire data.

You won't find this use of multiple -f options mentioned in the
man page, but it is in the info page.  (You have to hunt around
to find it, though--the GNU tar info page is poorly organized.)

Here is my crackin bash script to backup stuff into 1gig volumes:

 #!/bin/bash

 cd /test/archive/
 each_archivesize=1000000
 totalkbytes=`du -s . | cut -d "." -f 1`
 num_volumes=`expr $totalkbytes / $each_archivesize + 1`
 tar_args=`for i in $(seq 1 $num_volumes) ; do echo -n "-f archive$i.tar "; done`

 tar -cvL $each_archivesize $tar_args --totals *

Another approach is to use split, ie

$ tar cvzf - dirs | split --bytes=1m - archive.tar.gz.part-

3 pages link to TarNotes:

Version 2, saved on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 10:56:50 am by "MichaelBordignon"

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