[Bug-tar] Error in tar handling symlinks

[Klaus Ethgen]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Hello,

I have found a strange bug which I cannot realy produce 'till now but
mayby you can find somethink in code...

I made a big archive with the version 1.13.25 of gnu tar on linux from
some reiserfs partitions:

tar -cvzSp --checkpoint --totals --numeric-owner --rsh-command
/usr/bin/ssh -f address@hidden:/path/tar.tar.gz .

The directory . is the root of the complete system.

In the resulting tar there was some _absolute_ symbolic links or such
witch points to not existing files which will be extracted as normal
files of size 0 when using

tar xvzf tar.tar.gz (on linux or sun...)

when I use the sun tar the links will be extracted correct.

To extract the links with gnu tar I have to use the option "-P" when
extracting the archive.

Until now I have no idea in which circumstances this bug hapens. I still
have the tar file which makes the problem. With this I can reproduce the
bug. But it is 18GB big and has private data in it so I cannot send it
as example.

Gruß
   Klaus
- -- 
Klaus Ethgen                            http://www.ethgen.de/
pub  2048R/D1A4EDE5 2000-02-26 Klaus Ethgen <address@hidden>
Fingerprint: D7 67 71 C4 99 A6 D4 FE  EA 40 30 57 3C 88 26 2B
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)

iQEVAwUBP05k4J+OKpjRpO3lAQEXSAf7B3ntCgNkmj+UIEYASUe1RllwcMPOfhH1
/q/ZMY+z4kTM7/7RgZCW1rHqsCSnF1aCr4iLqDEERN3eh4V/UZNaVvpnG5+qXjOD
nOvZfBk2Ii5fOY99S+87QBYgnY76sL9sud2AcSfKsgpflehhioR3o9it8CXFbYod
LCyPfd0QvWWVjf6QwdzzBv/K50RqREsr8gskw2bAdiQgHu4UwHcnscoV4T+a5WiW
RmmbK1s4YHGUHMHZhpOYh2aD528rPwhU63eO45NxcfcagWLljadeJ3kgsvH9LTmO
T5Z6/DL9hbrl+tyRCu6vZXDwcZpXa4LXhySPy3AkrfwdCssr6iJHHg==
=dDvl
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----