I have several (27) huge (several GB each) bz2 archive files that I need combined into one bz2 archive. Uncompressing them and then creating a new archive from what was just uncompressed is not an option for me, since compressed, all 27 files add up to about 100GB, and uncompressed it's about 5-6TB (yes that's TERAbytes lol).
Can this be done with some sort of script, or is there even another compression format that allows for this to be done (easier)?
If you're willing to burn a few days of CPU, here's one solution with the magical pipe facility of modern UNIX(R) operating systems:
bzip2 -dc file*.bz2 | bzip2 >resulting_file.bz2
... actually, grab lbzip2 version 2.0, and do the same, except with lbzip2, on a multicore:
lbzip2 -dc file*.bz2 | lbzip2 >resulting_file.bz2