Fitting a large file onto diskette
There are a few methods to fit a file onto diskettes when the file
is too big to fit onto a single diskette.
You can first try to use gzip from the gnu locker or zip from the
sipb locker to try to compress the file to fit onto a single disk.
The gzip program will probably create a smaller file, but the zip
program may be better if you are transferring the file to a PC.
To access gzip:
athena% add gnu
athena% gzip -9 filename
The "-9" tells the "gzip" program to compress the file with the best
compression (it is a tiny bit slower this way).
To access zip
athena% add sipb
athena% zip target_filename filename
The zip file will be called target_filename.zip
If the file is still larger than a single disk, you can instead try
splitting the file into separate pieces which individually would fit on
a single disk:
athena% add gnu
athena% gsplit --bytes=1400k filename
will split "filename" into chunks of 1.4Mb each, which should fit on a
3.5" double-sided high-density floppy diskette. The pieces will be
named "xaa", "xab", "xac", and so on. You could then copy each
individual piece to separate floppy diskettes.
To put them back together again on Athena or a UNIX system, you can just
type:
athena% cat xa? > filename
(this will work if there less than 27 pieces -- if there are more, you
should use "x??" instead).
If instead, you are trying to put the pieces back on a DOS machine, you
can type:
C:> copy /b xaa+xab+xac+xad filename.zip
Note that you would only use as many "xaa" or "xab" or "xac"'s as you
actually have.
For information on copying the files to diskette see the Stock Answer
about Using disks with DOS format .
(last updated on Mar 26, 1997)
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