On 10/29/07, Robin Laing <Robin.Laing(a)drdc-rddc.gc.ca> wrote:
I would love an open source program that does what RAR files do.
With
the addition of PAR2 files, the RAR files or compressed files can be
repaired.
...
The problem is RAR is used heavily in usenet. RAR is not only a
compression tool but a splitter and a great archiving tool.
FWIW, there is a rpm "par2cmdline" that generates and works with par2
files. This is part of Fedora.
From what I have read about rar, all the rar pieces are simply one
archive that has been binary chopped up into n pieces. You can do that
with any archive with the "split" command and then "cat" them back
together. I have done that to chop up a large disk image to avoid the
2GB/file limit on FAT32 external backup drives:
dd if=/dev/partition_to_be_read_from | gzip -c \
| split -b 2000m - /mnt/usb/image_name.img.gz.
Then to combine them:
cat /mnt/usb/image_name.img.gz.* \
| gzip -dc | dd of=/dev/partition_to_be_written_to
/Mike