Tar. Tar is a GNU-licensed tool capable of creating multi-volume archives. In Mac OS X you need to use the Terminal to access the command line.
On Mac OS X 10.4.11* it works as follows:
tar --tape-length=102400 -cMv --file=tar_archive.{tar,tar-{2..100}} [files to tar]
102400 is size in KB or 100 MB. -c create, -M multi-volume and -v verbose. --file specifies the name of the tar archive to create, {tar,tar-{2..100}} is a bash expansion that provides the extensions .tar, .tar-2, .tar-3, etc. [files to tar] is the file or files to include in the archive.
Now, according to my source for this solution (http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090321124207437), the following is the extraction command, but, bash did not dutifully expand the braces for me so I had to develop a manual solution for combining the tar archives.
tar -xMv --file=tar_archive.{tar,tar-{2..100}} [files to extract]
What worked for me was this:
tar -xMv --file=tar_archive.tar
Followed by the prompt:
Prepare volume #2 for `file_that_was_tarred' and hit return:
At this point, type:
n tar_archive.tar-2
Presumably this means `name of the next volume is tar-archive.tar-2'
Now you'll be prompted with:
Prepare volume #2 for `tar_archive.tar-2' and hit return:
At this point press return.
You will need to repeat this process for each file in your multi-volume tar archive, remembering to change the suffix number each time.
Granted, there are much simpler ways now to accomplish this, but, I had to use Mac OS X 10.4.11 remotely using TeamViewer 7 (an amazing program that still runs and is allowed to access TeamViewer's servers on Mac OS X 10.4.11!!!). This was the least frustrating method of transferring a 2 GB disk image of a fresh install of Mac OS X 10.4.11 over the internet (if a 200 MB transfer fails that's 20 minutes, but, if a 2 GB transfer fails that's a day's worth of planning down the drain).
Source: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090321124207437
*I'm providing tech support for my father who needs to use the Classic version of Word 5.0 which only runs in Mac OS X 10.4.11 (he has Alzheimer's which means he cannot learn new things and gets frustrated with new things). I live in a different city so the only way for me to help him is by remote control.
Ok,this works. I was hoping for an archive file type the reciever can open in a GUI, like ZIP, RAR, etc. – Gerrit – 2010-08-09T14:20:19.703