The FAQ of Archive::Tar warns about this problem and also tells possible workardounds.

As a very easy workaround maybe switching to a 64bit Perl will make more memory available than the 3.2 GB you seem to get now.

In reply to Re: Archive::tar - out of memory - 3,2GB by Corion
in thread Archive::tar - out of memory - 3,2GB by demichi

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