Re: [Bug-tar] gtar error on OSX 10.9.5

[Pavel Raiskup]

Hi Rand, thanks for the mail.  For the next time, having the report
directly in mail would be much better :).

Rand wrote:
> gtar abends apparently stuck in a loop while backing up the primary
> device on my Mac.
> 
> I’m backing to an external drive attached via FireWire-800.
> 
> The included text below shows it start looping on /dev….  Massive amount
> of this text appears while finishing/aborting the backup, which is
> identically repeated when listing the backup.
> 
> Duplicate backups done several days previously did not do this.  
> 
> I had several external disks mounted before I started the backup that I
> dismounted to turn off the drives before starting.
...
> 07:13:29 7 Desktop $gtar --version
> tar (GNU tar) 1.28
...
> 07:05:50 4 Desktop $sudo time gtar -cvf /Volumes/FW250G/Mac250SSD_B.gtar 
> --one-file-system *
...
gtar: 
dev/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/4/fd/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5
 . . . . . . . .
[abend]

Seems like this directory is rather very deep so it makes GNU tar to
recurse too much.  This sounds like issue mentioned in [1] (there
are proposed patches to avoid recursion, ping?).  But since the recursion
is now in GNU tar, you can try to make the stack space a bit larger
(`ulimit -s 32768`).  Also, backing up /dev or /proc directories is
probably not very useful.

[1] http://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg04890.html

Pavel