How to create a DVD image with very large files?

[William W. Austin]

On 2006-10-04 at 08:31:28, Mogens Kjaer <mk at crc.dk> wrote:

> Patrick Doyle wrote:
> ...
>> For some reason, this makes me think that mkisofs isn't happy with
>> my
>> 6.5 Gbyte tarball.
> 
> I think this is a limitation with the ISO 9660 standard.
> 
> So a 64 bit machine, etc. etc. won't help.
> 
> Try making a UDF file system instead.
> 
(SNIP)

I had thought it was just a 32-bit limitation, so out of curiosity I  
tried it on a 64-bit system.  Oops: mkisofs (x86_64) fails to make the  
file. After looking at (and older version of) the code, I believe that  
P. Doyle is correct.

If the UDF file system is *NOT* an option for some reason, then an  
alternative would be to use split to break the tar file into multiple  
(for instance just under 2GB) pieces:

	split -b 2047M -d FILE.tar TAR-part.

That command line will give you output files like

	TAR-part.00 TAR-part.01 ... TAR-part.## (last one).

Then make the iso and burn the DVD.  When you want to access the  
original tar file on the DVD, simply

	cat TAR-part.* | tar xvf -

which will let you extract the archive as if it had never been split.

-- 
william w. austin                               waustin at speakeasy.net
"life is just another phase i'm going through. this time, anyway ..."