On Saturday 10 December 2005 10:50 pm, Gene Heskett wrote:
> Go grab a linux kernel src in bz2 format from kernel.org, make yourself
> about 10 directories to play in, and do a "tar xjf /path/to/.bz2" file
> in each of them, and then compare trees.

On my system, I extracted the latest Linux kernel 11 times using bzip2, and 
they all came out the same. See the details below. Maybe this is a hardware 
problem on your system? Bad memory could cause the behavior you describe.

But again, even if there is a problem with bzip2, the solution is to fix the 
bug in bzip2, not to stop using it. If you can find circumstances that 
reproduce it, I will be happy to report this to the bzip2 team.

Cheers,

--Ian

Test results follow. Note the --brief option to diff, which asks it to only 
report the existence of differences, rather than the details.

$ gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 0x517D0F0E
[snip]
$ wget http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.14.3.tar.bz2{,.sign}
[snip]
$ gpg --verify linux-2.6.14.3.tar.bz2{.sign,}
gpg: Signature made Thu 24 Nov 2005 05:53:27 PM EST using DSA key ID 517D0F0E
gpg: Good signature from "Linux Kernel Archives Verification Key 
<ftpadmin AT kernel DOT org>"
[snip trustdb message]
Primary key fingerprint: C75D C40A 11D7 AF88 9981  ED5B C86B A06A 517D 0F0E
$ for ((i=0; $i<=10; i++)); do mkdir test$i; tar -xjf linux-2.6.14.3.tar.bz2 
-C test$i; done
[no output]
$ for ((i=1; $i<=10; i++)); do diff --brief -r test0 test$i; done
[no output]
-- 
Forums for Amanda discussion: http://forums.zmanda.com/