Self Extracting Tar Files
Summary
An in-depth look at self-extracting tar files in shell scripts, highlighting a 2GiB segmentation fault when embedding large data via base64 and Here documents. It compares three approaches: base64 embedding, a marker-based workaround, and a sed-based streaming solution that avoids size limits by dropping initial script lines. Practical guidance for safely packaging large data into portable, self-extracting scripts.