Which method do you use if you backup a directory over 2GB?


I tried to use the below command to backup /usr/local/plesk, which is over 2GB, but it produced an error when I extracted it.

tar -cvzf backup.tgz /usr/local/plesk

if the file system is ext2
you cannot have .tar.gz files bigger than 2gb
it doesnt allow it

other fs's like resier do tho

As a 32-bit UNIX system, Linux can handle files not longer than 2Gb I think there is some way of tagging C in compile to 64bit but never seen or tried it.

We split our back-ups into 1GB sections (makes them a bit more user friendly too)

man tar -- lots of info there. Since you are (most likely) running into a file size limitation, use the -M option to create a multi-volume archive. This way you can still tar the whole thing, but split into several archives.

I think Linux itself can in fact handle files larger than 2 gigs -- it's ext2 which has the problem. I run Linux on a dual-boot system and have worked with a full system backup (~6 gig tar file) which I placed on a fat32 partition, while using Linux.