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richo
Asked: 2010-03-29 19:22:42 +0800 CST

Unix tool for splitting archives

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I'm dumping an svn repository to a giant USB disk that is formatted FAT due to necessity (treat this as unchangeable).

It conks out when you try to create a file larger than 4 gb.

I need a tool that I can pipe data to that will create files of arbitrary size that when catted together will be the original file. I can write a tool to do this, but if one already exists I'd rather use it.

Cheers

EDIT: A second look at the split man page looks like it might work.

unix

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    SVN dumps are one gigantic file, and FAT conks out after 4GB.

    split is a unix tool that sinks input into a series of files. From the manpage:

    NAME
       split - split a file into pieces

SYNOPSIS
       split [OPTION]... [INPUT [PREFIX]]

DESCRIPTION
       Output  fixed-size  pieces of INPUT to PREFIXaa, PREFIXab, ...; default
       size is 1000 lines, and default PREFIX is `x'.  With no INPUT, or  when
       INPUT is -, read standard input.

    Something like svnadmin dump $reponame | split -d -b 1073741824 "$reponame." -d will give you $reponame.1, $reponame.2 and so on, with a gigabyte file each. Hopefully FAT will continue to function with multiple large files.

    To put them back together again, use cat: cat $reponame.* | svnadmin load $reponame"

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