TECH Signal 399
Self-extracting shell scripts fail with segmentation faults for files over 2GiB
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A common method for embedding large tar files in shell scripts breaks when the embedded data exceeds 2GiB due to a segmentation fault in Bash here-documents
Engineers who rely on self-extracting shell scripts for deployment or distribution may encounter silent failures when handling large files. The workaround avoids the crash but introduces new edge cases that could corrupt data. This limitation is undocumented and may affect automation pipelines that assume the technique is robust
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
Base64-encoded self-extracting tar scripts crash when embedded data exceeds 2GiB due to Bash here-document limits
A workaround using sed with a marker avoids the crash but risks false positives if the marker appears in the data
A revised approach skips fixed header lines instead of searching for a marker, eliminating the edge case at the cost of rigid script structure
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