"gunzip: File too large" on Solaris 8

The gzip/gunzip provided in Solaris 8 (gzip version 1.2.4) cannot compress/uncompress files that are greater than 4GB in size.

If you attempt to compress/uncompress a file larger than 4GB, you may receive the following errors:

gzip: "Value too large for defined data type"

gunzip: "File too large"

Workaround #1 : Use gzcat

Using gzcat to concatenate the compressed file, for example:

# gzcat file.tar.gz > file.tar

Workaround #2 : Use SFW gzip 1.3x

As a more permanent workaround, you need to used gzip version 1.3.x or higher.These can be downloaded precompiled SFW package from http://www.sunfreeware.com or download the source from http://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/gzip.html.

Update (14/05/2002) Solaris 8 patch 112668-01 now contains gzip version 1.2.4a which completely resolves the above problem.