the initial copy was too slow and would've taken weeks to finish, so i've restarted it at a slightly faster rate.
the remaining problem is that some images have files with names longer than 100 characters, which standard tar(1) can't represent (the maximum length is 155 characters for directory + 100 for filename).
given the wide availability of GNU tar, i don't see a problem outputting GNU-format tar files instead of POSIX ones, but i can't find any documentation on their format. at least, the tar info files are not very enlightening. so, in the interests of useful image dumps, does anyone know where this is documented? :-)
thanks, kate.
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org