[snip]

Maybe I should try dd with bs=16M?  But will that pad the output file
with  an unacceptable-to-tar chunk at the end since the tapefile is
unlikely to  be an exact multiple of 16M?

-------
areid@budweiser(p1)(0):~/tartest% tar czvf foo.tar.gz foo
foo/
foo/bar/
foo/bar/baz/
areid@budweiser(p1)(0):~/tartest% ls -l foo.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--    1 areid    staff         152 Mar 11 14:42 foo.tar.gz
areid@budweiser(p1)(1):~/tartest% dd if=/dev/zero of=blank bs=1k count=10
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
areid@budweiser(p1)(0):~/tartest% ls -l
total 16
-rw-r--r--    1 areid    staff       10240 Mar 11 14:43 blank
drwxr-xr-x    3 areid    staff         102 Mar 11 14:42 foo/
-rw-r--r--    1 areid    staff         152 Mar 11 14:42 foo.tar.gz
areid@budweiser(p1)(0):~/tartest% cat foo.tar.gz blank > test.tar.gz
areid@budweiser(p1)(0):~/tartest% tar tzf test.tar.gz

gzip: stdin: decompression OK, trailing garbage ignored
foo/
foo/bar/
foo/bar/baz/
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
areid@budweiser(p1)(2):~/tartest%
---

Yes, it does return '2' but the data has been extracted already.

Actually, come to think of it, gzip is ignoring the garbage..

-----
areid@budweiser(p1)(0):~/tartest% gunzip foo.tar.gz
areid@budweiser(p1)(0):~/tartest% cat foo.tar blank > test.tar
areid@budweiser(p1)(0):~/tartest% tar tvf test.tar
drwxr-xr-x areid/staff       0 2004-03-11 14:42:08 foo/
drwxr-xr-x areid/staff       0 2004-03-11 14:42:08 foo/bar/
drwxr-xr-x areid/staff       0 2004-03-11 14:42:08 foo/bar/baz/
areid@budweiser(p1)(0):~/tartest%
-----

Tar doesn't even complain on my system here:
tar (GNU tar) 1.13.25

Thanks.

--
Joshua Baker-LePain
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University

Just my 2cents..
antoine

--
Antoine Reid
Administrateur Système - System Administrator

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