Since tgz is .tar.gz (a tar file compressed via gzip) there is no surprise that it's slow to get a single file from it. The whole tarball will be decompressed first and it's definitely expensive. If you have enough space on your hdd you can store a plain tarball instead of compressed file - that should work faster. It's also worth splitting a single archive into multiple files. E.g. you can store your /home in home.tgz and your /etc (which is small) in a separate etc.tar file.
Alexey On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 4:54 PM, Merciadri Luca <luca.mercia...@student.ulg.ac.be> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hello folks, > > I use tar to make (not necessarily incremental) backups of my /etc/*, > /home/*, and other important folders. I am encountering a problem: > reading a file in a .tgz takes a really long time. I use the > Archive Manager GUI (of GNOME) to go through all the folders of my > .tgz. My archive is ~5 Gigs. > > For example, let's say that I want to read my old /etc/fstab in my > .tgz. It takes something like 10 min to open it. The external HDD > where the .tgz is saved is connected through USB2 (same problem with > firewire) and other tasks are performed in a reasonable amount of > time. > > Any ideas? > > Thanks. > - -- > Merciadri Luca > See http://www.student.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~merciadri/ > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.8 <http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/> > > iEYEARECAAYFAkruunEACgkQM0LLzLt8Mhz1zQCfTCPk8+oxGIAElwlhxF9x/yJ4 > LtQAmgP9nMk+/Ri61FNrLCrDonuU6mWg > =r3VU > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org > > -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org