I'm the author of the GH repo and I just want to give full credit for figuring out Chrome does this to this guy: https://twitter.com/a_de_pasquale
All I did was think "if it works for 65mb why not more?" and write a quick proof of concept. Gets to 10gb on my 4gig laptop and then crashes. (MBA, OSX 10.10).
Wow, the twitter replies suggesting this was an accidental "tar cvf * backup.tar" sound right on the mark. Especially considering favicon.ico is probably the first file in a wp install, alphabetically.
For everyone struggling with tar, please be aware that you can use long-form arguments. So instead of "tar cvf filename files" you use "tar --create --verbose --file file.tar files" or maybe another order like ""tar --create --file file.tar --verbose files"-
Once you've used it more than once or twice, however, you will find that writing cfv is much more convenient than typing --create --verbose --file every time you want to tar something.
But if it's code you're only writing once - like in a script - you might consider using the longer ones to avoid screw ups and improve maintainability.
All I did was think "if it works for 65mb why not more?" and write a quick proof of concept. Gets to 10gb on my 4gig laptop and then crashes. (MBA, OSX 10.10).