LinuxQuestions.org - Trouble with an 8GB file

- Linux - Software (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/)

- - Trouble with an 8GB file (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/trouble-with-an-8gb-file-185706/)

Trouble with an 8GB file

I've got a large (8GB) file I'm trying to move to another machine. It's actuallly a tarball of pretty much the entire system. After tar completes the file, it's size is 8.3 GB.

I proceede to the target machine and open the file manager in webmin to try to d/l it and it reports the size ad 4.8 or so GB, I begin the download and mozilla reports x of 2 GB completed ....hmmm...after the download completes I try to browse the tarball in konqueror and get a file doesn't exist error.

so I come back to the original machine and try to open the tarball for browsing in konqueror and get an error that the file doesn't exist.

I'm not even close to out of disk space on either machine. The only reason I'm using webmin is because its already installed and handy....any thoughts on what could be the problem...???

Thanks

I should have mentioned that both are Fedora Core 1 systems and I believe support for large files is "built in"..will dig more for that though..thanks

OK, so maybe it is a problem with webmin or mozilla. Can you use a dedicated FTP client to get the file? What about wget?

Using a browser is not usually the best way to download a large file like this, as it is easier for the file to be corrupted.

Have you compressed the file first?

installing an ftp server on the source machine right now...will try this route

Well, I got it to copy via ftp, strangely enough when I used the hash on option during the transfer the hashes 'hung' about the 2GB mark, the file continued to transfer but stuck about the 6 GB mark.

I successfully transfered it without the hashes on, but still couldn't do anything to it with konqueror, got it to untar find via shell, so alls well that ends well i guess...:]

The info page for tar includes an example of using pipes to copy entire directories, using a pipe. The destination directory could be a share on another machine. This might be a better method of transfering such large amounts to another machine.

Code:

  For example, here is how you might copy a directory's contents from

one disk to another, while preserving the dates, modes, owners and

link-structure of all the files therein.  In this case, the transfer

medium is a "pipe", which is one a Unix redirection mechanism:



    $ cd sourcedir; tar -cf - . | (cd targetdir; tar -xf -)



The command also works using short option forms:



    $ cd sourcedir; tar --create --file=- . | (cd targetdir; tar --extract --file=-)



This is one of the easiest methods to transfer a `tar' archive.

Keep in mind, that when the files are transfered to another machine, that the group ownerships may need to be changed. The gid of the 'disk' group on one machine may not match the gid number of the 'disk' group on a second machine. You will need to compare the /etc/group files on the two machines.

The find command can locate any files by group ownership if there are group number/name differences.

Great, thanks!

Also with -p I can keep the permissions in tact, and since the whole /etc directory is going over too, things should fall in line.

I'm more curious now about why I'm having trouble manipulating the large file with gui tools.