Re: [cobalt-developers] cmu export issues with tar

[Anders <andersb@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jeff Bilicki wrote:

>> Since this is the first time I ever used these files,
>> I have a funny feeling the cmuExport never created the tars properly.
>> I have many files that are broken that it dumped into a directory
>> on my raq 4. They were not mangled by ftp.
> 
> I have reports that GNU Tar does not read symlinks properly if they are
> created
> with the Tar.pm perl module.   It does not means that archive is broken, but
> the stardard Tar cannot read it properly.  I am currently looking into this
> issue and hopefully will have some more information soon.

It seems like Archive::Tar (as used by the CMU utility) writes
absolute symlinks in a somewhat different fashion than GNU tar does ?

It seems like it can extract (x) them properly,
but listing (t) the archive "skips to next header".

When listing with the "ptar" utility (available from CPAN),
http://search.cpan.org/src/SRZ/Archive-Tar-0.20/ptar
all the files are listed with no such errors...

Maybe it would work better for restoring your files, too ?
(if you need to expand the files outside of the CMU itself)

--anders

PS. Other differences seems to be whether directories are
    listed with a trailing slash or not, and whether symlinks
    are created with the same permission when extracting...
    (not that permissions on symlinks should matter, but)