Re: [Bug-tar] mystic message: tar: bdeb60x64/bdeb60x64.vmdk: File shrank by 7579713536 bytes

[Alexander Sashnov]

Hello,

That means I didn't understand this message correctly (but I'm learning
English for 2 years already).

My proposal is to change this message to make it more understandable.

After your explanation I have another proposal:

tar: warn: bdeb60x64/bdeb60x64.vmdk: File shrank while it was archiving. 
7579713536 bytes was stored, the rest will be filled with zeros.



On 03.12.2014 20:32, Sergey Poznyakoff wrote:
>> This message is wrong because it doesn't say is my archive OK or not.
> That depends a great deal upon what you mean by OK.  It is OK in the
> sense it can be extracted.  The file in question was altered by a
> third party and tar had to cope with that change.
>
>> In console I cannot see comes it on stdout or stderr (I use default
>> shell in Debian 7).
> It goes to stderr, as all warning and error messages do.
>
>> Actual result:
>>
>> address@hidden:~/vmware$ tar czf bdeb60x64_vmware.tgz bdeb60x64
>> tar: bdeb60x64/bdeb60x64.vmdk: File shrank by 7579713536 bytes;
>> padding with zeros
>>
>> Expected result:
>>
>> tar: info: bdeb60x64/bdeb60x64.vmdk: File shrank by 7579713536 bytes
>> because 3926 Mb of file's tail contains only zeroes;
> You seem to be confusing the cause and effect.  The fact that the "file's
> tail" (as stored in the archive) contains zeros is caused by the fact
> that it had shrunk by the listed number of bytes, and not vice-versa.
>
> Regards,
> Sergey
>