How to create a DVD image with very large files?

[Jacques B.]

> Thank you for the suggestion.  Unfortunately, the image I wish to back
> up is the former contents of a 20 Gbyte reiserfs partition (of which
> 15 Gbytes were used).  I don't believe that Win RAR will support
> reading a Linux reiserfs partition, nor do I expect it will handle
> things like symbolic links, device nodes, etc...  But I'll check it
> out nonetheless.
>
> --wpd

How about using the Linux split command to split it up into smaller
chunks (unless you want to succeed at your challenge to get it over
onto one DVD, or have a need for it).

Simply use:
split -b 4096m bigfile.tar bigfile.

This will split the file in 4096 meg chunks (4 gig chunks).  The first
file is your input file.  The second is your output file.  If you
don't specify an output, it uses xaa, xab, xac, etc.  Here I specified
the same filename followed by a period.  That way the resulting files
are named bigfile.aa bigfile.ab, etc.

To rebuilt it later, use
cat bigfile.a[ab] > bigfile.tar
If you end up with more than just aa and ab, then you'd want to modify
that cat command to include all your files (i.e. bigfile.a[a-d]).

I tested it out and did a md5sum of the original file, then a md5sum
of the file that I split and re-assembled and they matched.  So it
works perfectly.

Jacques B.