SUSE vs Mandriva 10.1

[oldcpu]

EDIT 2: You can easily zip files in linux with, what else, zip! I just installed it via apt-get. For directions do:

man zip

Thanks. But I took a reasonable look at the zip "man" page, and I saw no mention as to how one can specify a maximum file size (and thus have the zip file chopped up into many different pieces).

The difficulty I am trying to solve is how to copy large files ( > 2 GBytes) from Linux to a Windows NTFS (via vfat 32 partition). I can do the reverse (Windows NTFS to Linux, by chopping up the file, while in Windows, using winzip or winrar). But I can not (yet) do the reverse.

[oldcpu]

Winrar will manage all of your formats. Although for the best of everything in FOSS on Windows - use 7zip. It's great. It's on sourceforge.net

I downloaded the latest 7zip from source forge, and compiled/created an rpm for my SuSE-9.3 using make and checkinstall. I strongly suspect the same would work for Mandriva. I prefer to create rpms, as it is easier to remove, if it does not do what I want.

I noticed a command line option -v {size} [blklmlg] : create volume . I wonder if that is a way to specify a max size and have the compressed file chopped up into many pieces?

Unfortunately, I did not notice a gui for this for linux variant of p7zip. Is it only command line, or is there a gui that I missed?

[Edit1: I am trying p7zip from the command line. So far it seems to be working, albeit incredibly slow, although the file is very big. I'm trying to chop a 3.5GByte iso file into pieces of a max 1GByte in size. (with my Athlon-2800+, SuSE-9.3, on a 300GByte internal maxtor 7200rpm, and reiser file system). I used command line: oldcpu@linux: 7z a -v1g test.zip inputfile.iso Thus far it has created a 1GByte file test.zip.001 and is currently creating test.zip.002. Next, I supose, is installing the windows version of p7zip on my WinXP boot partition, so I can decompress this file. Note to myself - I need to find an option to only chop up, and not compress. ]

[bigtomrodney]

There is a 7Zip in the guru repositories, called p7zip. Unfortunately I haven't found a gui either yet.

-t7z 7z archive

-m0=lzma
lzma method

-mx=9 level of compression = 9 (Ultra)

-mfb=64
number of fast bytes for LZMA = 64

-md=32m
dictionary size = 32 megabytes

It seems it has a similar compression rate to regular zip. I know in normal zip if you set it to '0' it just builds a storage archive without any compression. Maybe that'll work.

[oldcpu]

There is a 7Zip in the guru repositories, called p7zip. Unfortunately I haven't found a gui either yet.

Thanks, I should have checked guru. It would have saved me some work.

Oh well, the tarball compiled ok, and I did create my own custom rpm. This should mean it runs quicker, although it took well over an hour to chop up my 3.5 GByte file.

I know in normal zip if you set it to '0' it just builds a storage archive without any compression. Maybe that'll work.

Thanks, I'll give it a try over the weekend.

Edit: Using -mx=0 works like a charm. My command line was oldcpu@linux: 7z a -v1g -mx=0 anothertest.zip inputfile.iso. This time very very quickly, the 3.5 GByte file was chopped up into 3 x 1 GByte files, and 1 x 0.5 GByte file. I'll check a Windows partition capability to decompress/recombine the files over the weekend.