Re: [Bug-tar] odd tar behavior

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

Hi Rich,

> After some time (may be a few files, may be one hundred) my script's
> attempts to untar files fail with exit status 2.  I have scoured the
> web for an explanation of exit status 2 and only found one comment

Possible exit codes of GNU tar are described in section 3.1 of the
manual.  You will find an online copy here:

 http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_section/Synopsis.html#IDX28

The code 2 means fatal error.  Before exiting with this code, tar prints
detailed description of the error on standard error.  Please, examine it.

> #Capture the directory name from the output of the download
> dirname=$(tar -xzvf $download)

That looks strange to me.  This command can produce megabytes of output,
are you sure you wish to tuck them all into a shell variable?

Regards,
Sergey