not letting me TAR 155gb images directory, keeps giving me error

Question

[root@centosvm01 /]# tar -cvfz --exclude=/storage/thumbs/ /storage/storage.tar /storage/ tar: z: Wrote only 6144 of 10240 bytes tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

it's 155GB of just images. I know there is 700GB free on the drive /storage /storage is a mounted drive.

Recommend you drop the 'z' switch from your `tar` command. gzip compression doesn't really do much for images. — Steven Monday, Dec 03 '10 at 19:02
Also, is your `/storage` filesystem capable of handling very large (multi-gigabyte) files? Your `tar` command will try to create such a file. — Steven Monday, Dec 03 '10 at 19:05
Are you still messing around with this? look at the original question and see my response, notice the big number next to it - that's because you'd be done by now if you'd tried. — Chopper3, Dec 03 '10 at 19:17

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 03 '10 at 19:07

You have a problem with your command line. Look at the error message:

tar: z: Wrote only 6144 of 10240 bytes tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

Tar is trying to create a file called "z" in your current directory (and is presumably running out of space, which is what this error usually means). This is happening because the -f option takes an argument, so your command line is, effectively, this:

tar -cv -f z --exclude=/storage/thumbs/ /storage/storage.tar /storage/

When what you mean is:

tar -cvz -f /storage/storage.tar --exclude=/storage/thumbs /storage/

And of course, as Steve said in his comment, you don't really need -z with images, anyway, since they're typically already compressed.

not letting me TAR 155gb images directory, keeps giving me error

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