Using Tar

[Steven M. List]

swade at sandstorm.Berkeley.EDU (Wade Shen) writes:

>I have a tar file that is too big to be extracted onto my HD... How would 
>i go about untaring it.  I have enough space for the untared files but not 
>for the tar and the extracted files... I have a tape drive and have tried 
>to use it to tar the tar files and then extract it and pipe it to another 
>tar:
>	tar -xvf /dev/rct0 | tar -xvf emacs.tar

>	This doesn't work either... Can anyone help?

If I understand correctly, the problem is to extract the files but without
doubling disk requirements.  Why would one use two tar commands in this
instance?  It sounds as though Wade is TARring the TAR file onto tape
first.  If this is so, then try, instead, writing the tar file onto the
tape with DD.  Depending on the block size in the TAR file (default is 1
block - 512 bytes - according to the manual), the commands would be this:

	dd if=emacs.tar of=/dev/rct0 bs=1b
	#rm emacs.tar
	tar -xvf /dev/rct0

I'd think that would do it.  Can anyone else think of something that I'm
missing here?
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