[Bug-tar] Major Bug with tar and incremental backup using the -l and --listed-incremental flags

[Terry Barnaby]

Hi,

There has been a major bug (at least to me :) ) in tar since version 1.13.7
and it is still there in 1.14.90.

I normally perform full backups with a command similar to:

tar -c -l -f /dev/st0 --listed-incremental=stamp / /usr /dist /src /home

If I do this tar does not backup all of my systems files contained in
the separate mount points.
I have a simple example that illustrates the problem.
In this case there are two directories a and b each containing a file.
The second directory has a separate file system mounted on it (created with
a Linux loop back device). When I run this with the newer versions of
tar the files in the directory b are not backed up ....

################################################################################
#       Tar bug
################################################################################
#

setup(){
        # Create dirs
        mkdir a
        mkdir b
        
        # Create a file system
        dd if=/dev/zero of=fs count=1000; mke2fs -F fs
        
        # Mount file system
        mount -o loop fs b
        
        # Create files
        echo "Hello There" > a/filea
        echo "Hello There" > b/fileb
}

cleanup(){
        umount b
        rm -fr a b fs s
}

runTest(){
        echo "Perform Tar"
        rm -f s;
        tar -clf - -g s . ./b | tar -tf -
        echo "Perform Tar: completed"
}

setup
runTest
cleanup
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Terry
--
Dr Terry Barnaby                     BEAM Ltd
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