SUMMARY: bizzare behaviour of stock tar (4.0f PK7)

From: Bentley, Adam \( Dist \) (Adam.Bentley@eme.co.uk)
Date: Tue Mar 23 2004 - 05:05:58 EST


My thanks to Dr Blinn, Michael Polnick and Charles Richmond. It would
appear there is a buglet in the version of tar on 4.0fpk7. However there
are older versions of tar lurking on the system which work as expected.
See responses below :-

-----Original Message-----
On Monday, March 22, 2004, at 11:57 AM, Bentley, Adam (( Dist )) wrote:

>
> Does anyone know if there's a fix for the following issue :-
>
> Unpacking a tar archive but wanting to restore to an alternative
> location I use
>
> tar sxvf sometarfile.tar
>
> so leading '/'s are chopped off the files and they are restored below
> my
> current location...
>
> using this or its alternative form
>
> tar xPvf "/" sometarfile.tar
>
> seems to have the same effect on filename with '&' in them
>
> eg...
>
> myserver # tar tf /tmp/test.tar
> /tmp/foo
> /tmp/foo/cb_isolatedl&c_h_visax
> /tmp/foo/cb_isolatedl&c_h_visax_no
> /tmp/foo/cb_isolatedl&c_v_visax
> /tmp/foo/cb_isolatedl&c_v_visax_no
> myserver # pwd
> /tmp/foo2
> myserver # tar xvsf /tmp/test.tar
> blocksize = 20
> x tmp/foo
> x tmp/foo/cb_isolatedl/c_h_visax, 243 bytes, 1 tape blocks
> x tmp/foo/cb_isolatedl/c_h_visax_no, 352 bytes, 1 tape blocks
> x tmp/foo/cb_isolatedl/c_v_visax, 239 bytes, 1 tape blocks
> x tmp/foo/cb_isolatedl/c_v_visax_no, 348 bytes, 1 tape blocks
>
>
> is there a fix or flag to resolve this? It works as expected when
> unpacking without using 's' or 'P' options with tar

------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
 Michael Polnick
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
This is strange.

Workaround: Use gtar, it does it right.

Regards
Michael
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Dr Thomas P. Blinn
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
It's possible that if the problem was understood, there might be
a fix in V4.0F PK8. I'd have to go find the tar/pax/cpio source
to see if it has any edit history.

It's also possible that the tar from, say, V4.0F unpatched, or
the tar from the "OSFOBSOLETE" subset will work. If you've got
the "obsolete" tar loaded, the path should be

/usr/opt/obsolete/usr/bin/tar
or
/usr/opt/obsolete/sbin/tar

and sometimes that old tar works "better" (as expected). The
saveset format should be completely compatible.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Charles Richmond
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-

If you have the "obsolete" set installed then the following works:
     /usr/opt/obsolete/usr/bin/tar -xvsf xxxx.tar

koibito> /usr/opt/obsolete/usr/bin/tar -xvsf try.tar
tar: blocksize = 20
x 1&2, 0 bytes, 0 tape blocks
x 2&3, 0 bytes, 0 tape blocks
x 3&4, 0 bytes, 0 tape blocks
koibito> ls -l
total 10
-rw-r--r-- 1 cmr system 0 Mar 22 12:49 1&2
-rw-r--r-- 1 cmr system 0 Mar 22 12:49 2&3
-rw-r--r-- 1 cmr system 0 Mar 22 12:49 3&4
-rw-r--r-- 1 cmr system 10240 Mar 22 12:50 try.tar

--
thanks to all...
Adam.
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