[Bug-tar] Problem with updating an archive (Option -u )

[Ingo Lantschner]

Hi,
I am using GNU tar as it comes with RedHat9 (1.13.25)

I try to backup the homedirectory of several users into a file home.tar 
using 

$ tar -uvf /some/path/home.tar ~

Each time I do the backup, ALL of the files are appended to the tar-file 
instead of just the ones which have changed. I have no explanation for 
this behavior.

Investigating with tar -tv shows the following:

---
address@hidden backup]# tar -tvf home.tar root/tmp/sendmailanalyse.dump
-rw-r--r-- root/root      3106 2003-12-23 12:05:35 \
root/tmp/sendmailanalyse.dump
-rw-r--r-- root/root      3106 2003-12-23 12:05:35 \
root/tmp/sendmailanalyse.dump
-rw-r--r-- root/root      3106 2003-12-23 12:05:35 \
root/tmp/sendmailanalyse.dump
---

So the same file, with the same date and size is several times in the 
archive. In the above example I did a first tar -u (which created the 
archive) and then an other two times tar -u .

Doing the same tar -u on the same machine with smaller directory-structurs
(produced just for testing) gives me exactly what I expected:

---
address@hidden backup]# tar -tvf test.tar                              
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2003-12-28 14:02:48 test/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2003-12-28 14:02:57 test/sub/
-rw-r--r-- root/root         0 2003-12-28 14:02:57 test/sub/f2
-rw-r--r-- root/root         9 2003-12-28 14:03:48 test/f1
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2003-12-28 14:15:59 test/
-rw-r--r-- root/root      1242 2003-12-28 14:15:59 test/f1
---
In the above example the file f1 is included two times, but with DIFFERENT 
sizes and dates. This is how it should be.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Ingo.


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