OT: usage of split

[Chris]

Andrew L. Gould wrote:
> Regarding the usage of split to divide files into several parts:
> 
> 1.  Can the split utility be used on binary files?
> 
> 2.  How does one rejoin the resulting split files to recreate the 
> original file?  I assume you can cat text files into a new file using 
> redirection (>>); but can you do that with a binary file?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Andrew Gould

I had somewhat of the same question. Here's my docs on how it was
explained to me:

To create a tarball backup and split it up for CD burning.
Something like:

tar cjf - /dir/to/backup |split -b 650m - bkupname-

Note that using a pipe saves s lot of space. This will produce backups
in the form of bkupname-aa, bkupname-ab etc.

Restoring the backup would be something like:

cd /parent/of/backupdir; cat /path/to/bkup/bkupname-* |tar xjf -

Note that you need to have all backup files on a disk for this to work
properly.

This is what I do to archive my system to a CD Rom. It's sorta like what
winzip does with diskette spanning.


-- 
Best regards,
Chris

The man who has no more problems is out of the game.