Re: [Bug-tar] Interchange issue with archive containing sparse file

[Joerg Schilling]

address@hidden wrote:

> There seems to be an interchange problem between star and GNU tar,
> possibly related to sparse file support. Or perhaps this is just a bug in
> GNU tar?
>
> I'm using star 1.5 and the problem happened with both GNU tar 1.22 (my
> Linux distribution's provided version) and 1.25 which I compiled from
> source.
>
> I created an archive using star:
>   $ star -no-fifo -v -c f=archive.tar artype=xustar -numeric -sparse filename
>
> The archive created by star was a multiple of 10KB in size; 3,666,155,520
> bytes. Both star and GNU tar extract the file from archive.tar correctly.
> However, after extraction GNU tar reports:
>   tar: Unexpected EOF in archive
>   tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

If GNU tar archives sparse files, it creates archives that violate the 
POSIX structuring conventions for TAR archives. 

If you tell star to create a GNU tar archive, it creates a TAR archive with the 
same structuring defetcs as GNU tar expects.

If you tell star to create a POSIX compliant archive, it however creates an 
archive that follows the POSIX TAR structuring conventions and that as a result
will not be understood by GNU tar.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:address@hidden (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       address@hidden                (uni)  
       address@hidden (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily