Creating a multi-part archive to fit on floppy on Solaris 5.8

Question

I am trying to use tar to split a single file in to parts small enough to fit on a 1.44MB floppy on Solaris 5.8.

According to the references below, I should be able to achieve this by using the k option to specify the size of the segments, and the f option to specify the output file.

I have tried the command in various formats:

tar cvf -k 1378 <output file> <input file>
tar cvf <output file> <input file> -k 1378
tar cvf <output file> -k 1378 <input file>

At best, this produces a file with the name of one of the options, at the same size as the original file.

The tar utility provided differs from the GNU tar utility available on most modern Linux systems. gtar is not available. I am unable to install new packages on this system.

Alternatively, do you know of any other utilities that exist on a Solaris 5.8 base install?

References:

• https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19109-01/tsolaris8/817-0879/6mgl9vnhn/index.html
• http://ibgwww.colorado.edu/~lessem/psyc5112/usail/man/solaris/tar.1.html

Answer 1

I've opted for the 'unclean' method of using dd to move the file across in segments, e.g.

dd if=input.file of=output.file.part-1 bs=1378 count=1 skip=0
dd if=input.file of=output.file.part-2 bs=1378 count=1 skip=1
dd if=input.file of=output.file.part-3 bs=1378 count=1 skip=2
dd if=input.file of=output.file.part-n bs=1378 count=1 skip=n-1...

And then reassembling at the other end:

dd if=input.file-part1 of=output.file bs=1378 count=1 seek=0
dd if=input.file-part2 of=output.file bs=1378 count=1 seek=1
dd if=input.file-part3 of=output.file bs=1378 count=1 seek=2
dd if=input.file-partn of=output.file bs=1378 count=1 seek=n-1...

There are likely better ways, but this seems to have served the purpose.

Answer 2

hav you considered the split command?

It takes a filename and a length, then outputs smaller files with the specified length and a series number in the new files names

The out files can be reassembled with the cat command

split -b 1200000 mypackage.tar 

will create a bunch of files named xaa,xab,xac and so on with up to 1,200,000 bytes per file each file should fit on a 1.44m floppy with a space to spare for the directory.

copy each x file to a floppy and on the target machine copy all the files into an empty directory and in that directory type

cat x* >mypackage.tar

to reconstruct the tar file