[debbugs-tracker] bug#21111: closed (GNU tar warns about zeroed timestamps in binary tarball)

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Your message dated Wed, 22 Jul 2015 22:59:05 +0200
with message-id <address@hidden>
and subject line Re: bug#21111: possibly bogus in binary tarball
has caused the debbugs.gnu.org bug report #21111,
regarding GNU tar warns about zeroed timestamps in binary tarball
to be marked as done.

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21111: http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=21111
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> Subject: 
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> possibly bogus in binary tarball
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> Date: 
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> Wed, 22 Jul 2015 12:55:13 +0100
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> User-agent: 
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> Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.4 (gnu/linux)
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> The timestamps in the guix-binary-0.8.3.x86_64-linux.tar.xz tarball are
> all at the epoch, so unpacking it spews messages like
>
>   tar: ./var/guix: implausibly old time stamp 1970-01-01 01:00:00
>
> I guess that's not intentional, but if it is, it's probably worth a note
> in the installation instructions.
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>
>
> --- End Message ---
> --- Begin Message ---
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> Subject: 
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> Re: bug#21111: possibly bogus in binary tarball
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>
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> Date: 
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> Wed, 22 Jul 2015 22:59:05 +0200
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>
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> User-agent: 
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> Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.5 (gnu/linux)
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>
> Dave Love <address@hidden> skribis:
>
> > Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> >> Interestingly, I do not get this message, both with ‘tar xf’ and
> >> ‘tar xvf’ with GNU tar 1.28.
> >>
> >> I tried with different timezones, and I can’t trigger it.
> >>
> >> Dave: What version of GNU tar do you use, and in what timezone?
> >>
> >> TIA,
> >> Ludo’.
> >
> > It was on RHEL6 in the UK zone
> >
> >   $ grep -I zone /etc/sysconfig/clock
> >   ZONE="Europe/London"
> >   
> > with:
> >
> >   $ rpm -q tar
> >   tar-1.23-11.el6.x86_64
> >
> > There aren't any obviously-relevant patches in the tar package changelog.
>
> According to the 1.28 manual (info "(tar) warnings"), this specific
> warning can be explicitly enabled with --warning=timestamp.
>
> However, I tried variations of the following command with no luck:
>
>   TZ=Europe/London tar --warning=timestamp --extract -f \
>     guix-binary-0.8.3.i686-linux.tar.xz
>
> So maybe the fact that 1.28 doesn’t emit the warning is a bug.
>
> > I think it would be worth a note on the timestamps anyway to avoid
> > confusion and make sure they're maintained, if they should be.  (Excuse
> > me if that's done somewhere, but I just went to the current installation
> > instructions.)
>
> I’ve added this to the installation instructions in commit aafa0df:
>
>    Some versions of GNU tar raise a warning about “implausibly old
>    time stamps”.  This is because all the files in the archive have
>    their modification time set to zero (which means January 1st,
>    1970.)  This is done on purpose to make sure the archive content is
>    independent of its creation time, thus making it reproducible.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Ludo’.
>
>
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