zip: Argument list too long (80.000 files in overall)

Question

I need to compress 80.000 files into multiple zip files. This is the command I use:

zip -s 200M photos_test/*

However I get the following error:

-bash: /usr/bin/zip: Argument list too long

What can I do to solve the issue, beside manually splitting the folder files ?

thanks

Mat · Answer 1 · 2011-04-19 09:00:49Z

up vote 2 down vote accepted

If you want the whole directory, you could simply use the -r switch:

zip -r -s 200M myzip photos_test

That will include all subdirectories of photos_test though.

answered Apr 19 '11 at 9:00

Mat
1,57129

	+1, would have suggested the same thing – slhck Apr 19 '11 at 9:03
	I've done what you suggest and I have a small myzip.zip (7mb) and the segments (200mb each). However, I cannot unzip the content, I'm running unzip unix myzip.zip but I get "bad zipfile offset (lseek)". Furthermore, I need to extract them in Windows environment as well, and there I only have Windows 7 extractor I guess. – Patrick Apr 19 '11 at 10:08
	those are different questions, open another question for that (link to this one for reference). make sure you post the names of the generated zip files (not all of them, but first and last at least), and the exact command line you use. – Mat Apr 19 '11 at 10:11

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Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Answer 2 · 2011-04-19 09:03:41Z

up vote 1 down vote

find photos_test/ -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 | zip -@ -s 200M

answered Apr 19 '11 at 9:03

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2 Answers