> I inadvertantly generated during a backup session with tar files which - > obviously - are greater than 2 GB. the space occupied appears in "df ." > - however trying to "rm" this file this is not possible > > the errormessage is: > > rm: cannot remove `backup-share.tar': Value too large for defined data > type > > what could I do to remove that file ?
Your version of GNU fileutils were apparently not configured to support large files. They do support large files when compiled to do so. Purely as a workaround I would suggest different things. At least one should work. I am sure the perl fans will suggest this. But this again requires perl to be configured for large files. perl -e 'unlink("backup-share.tar");' So let's try to hit it more directly. Truncate the file first. That will make it small and then you can remove it. The shell will do this when redirecting the output of commands. true > backup-share.tar rm backup-share.tar However, if your shell was not compiled for large files then the redirection will fail. In that case we have to resort to more subtle methods. Since tar created the file then tar must be configured to support large files. Use that to your advantage to truncate the file. touch /tmp/junk tar cvf backup-share.tar /tmp/junk Hope that helps Bob _______________________________________________ Bug-fileutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-fileutils