"Donald Woeltje" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > We have a problem with tar. Because of something very specific we need to do > with tar, there is a limitation in tar that is causing us serious heartache. > Would it be possible to get a copy of the source code for tar, so that maybe > we can have the manufacturer of our proprietary Unix-based OS (called > "SecureOS") compile a version of tar for us that eliminates this problem? > > The problem is that tar seems to be hardcoded for a maximum number of > characters that can be used for a filename. We need that maximum adjusted to > a limit of 120 characters. I don't know what the limit is, but when we try to > tar up using a file name that long, tar generates an error message telling us > that the filename is to long.
The historical tar archive format has a path name length limitation of 100 chars. You cannot enhance this without breaking the format. The POSIX.1-1988 version of tar has a path name length limitation between 100 and 255 chars (there must be a '/' at a place that allows to split the name into a 155 char prefix and a 100 char suffix). The POSIX.1-2001 version of tar no longer has a path name length limitation. If you like to create tar archives that are standard compliant by default, I recommend you to use star ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star/alpha/ star by default creates POSIX.a-1988 compliant archives and may be told to create POSIX.1-2001 archives. GNU tar by default uses a private method to archive long path names that is not compatible to standard tar implementations. Jörg -- EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] (uni) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
