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    completely forgot the origin of tar - tape archiving. thx for pointing out :) Commented Jan 8, 2021 at 9:00
  • Wow this works perfectly! Wasn't built for my use case but works nonetheless! I found/modified a script from this GNU page that numbers the archive (Pasted in a separate answer due to space). Commented Jan 8, 2021 at 18:24
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    @alecxs actually I tried to solve it with cpio first :) cpio + a loopback device (for the virtual tape). It kind of worked, but the extraction had issues and it seems it cannot accomodate a file that's larger than a single tape. Thanks for the script @JoshHarrison. Commented Jan 8, 2021 at 18:42
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    Please keep in mind that this solution is based on vendor specific behavior of GNU tar and thus not portable. Other tar implementations use a different command line. See e.g. schilytools.sourceforge.net/man/man1/star.1.html for the oldest free tar implementation. BTW: cpio is outdated and definitely not recommended for new software. Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 14:58