Description of problem: CPIO error writing to tape on files larger than 7gb. We have 2 large files in our backup: The first file is 7gb in size and the other is 35gb in size. cpio generates errors on both files. I removed the first file and it then resulted with the same error on the second file. "cpio -oc --block-size=16MB >/dev/st0 </file_list" Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): cpio-2.5-13.RHEL4 How reproducible: This has occurred daily using a script. The specific script portion using cpio is noted in step one below. The "file_list" is a flat file from a find command. Steps to Reproduce: 1.cpio -oc --block-size=16MB >/dev/st0 </file_list 2."cpio field width not sufficient for storing file size" results on the large files 3. Backup runs a few more minutes and then hits the "end of tape" too soon Actual results: Expected results: Additional info:
Size of files stored in cpio archive is limited to 4 GiB. Larger files are skipped. You can use another archive type, like tar, which supports files up to 64 GiB.
From the source it looks like it was part of the writeOutHeaderBufferOverflow patch. I'm reverting to cpio-2.5-9.RHEL4 for now, as it has no such limit. Why was this changed? 4 GiB seems to be a horribly low limit for an archive tool...