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2.5. cpio

The GNU cpio utility copies files into or out of a cpio or tar archive.
  • The cpio utility uses a default block size of 512 bytes for I/O operations. This may not be supported by certain types of tape devices. If a tape device does not support this block size, cpio fails with the following error message:
    cpio: read error: Cannot allocate memory
    
    To work around this issue, modify the default block size with the --block-size long option, or use the -B option to set the block size to 5120 bytes. When the block size supported by the tape device is provided, the cpio utility works as expected. (BZ#573943 )