fedora-list Digest, Vol 3, Issue 513

[Parameshwara Bhat]

On Mon, 31 May 2004 06:37:59 -0400 (EDT), <fedora-list-request at redhat.com> 
wrote:



>> Hello List,
>>
>> Here is an archive file whixh is bigger than a floppy size.How do I 
>> make it
>> span floppies in the manner of Winzip? Also, I have difficulty copying 
>> spanned
>> zip files off floppies. How do I do that ?
>>
>> Help,please .
>>
>> Parameshwara Bhat
>
> I can tell you what I do to separate very large tar/gzip archives into
> cd sized chunks. It's not exactly like winzip's span floppies. But it
> should do what you need.
>
> I'd use the split command. Which with an existing large file (lets call
> it archive.tgz) that I wanted to split into ( lets say 1MB )  pieces...
>
> $ split -b 1m archive.tgz split_tgz_
>
> I chose the output prefix "split_tgz_", But it could have been anything.
>
> the output of the above split command would be files named:
>
> split_tgz_aa split_tgz_ab split_tgz_ac split_tgz_ad etc...
>
> Put the output files on as many floppies as it takes...
>
> To restore the archive.tgz file to a usable state from the floppies,
> copy all the split_tgz_* files from all the floppies to a single 
> directory
> on your harddrive. Then from that directory the command:
>
> $ cat split_tgz_* >archive.tgz
>
> should rebuild the original archive.tgz file...
>
> For more details try:
>
> $ info split
>
> and
>
> $ info cat

Yes,that does work.But what I was looking for was not just meeting an 
actual need.But a technological question as to why Linux can't do it or 
doesn't do it or hasn't thought fo doing it ? What you suggest is a two 
way work .But Winzip has been spanning floppies for many years and it 
appears so simple a task in Windows.Why this feature not in Linux ? I 
guess because of it's clumsy mount and unmount ?

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