On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 10:02:43AM -0500, Gene Heskett enlightened us:
> >On Wednesday, 08.03.2006 at 07:35 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> >> >On the client being backed-up:
> >> >
> >> >$ tar --version
> >> >
> >> >tar (GNU tar) 1.14
> >>
> >> We believe this version of tar is borked.  Please get the older
> >> 1.13-19, 1.13-25, or the newer 1.15-1.  For whatever reason, 1.14
> >> was only visible on gnu.org for about 5 or 6 weeks, being replaced
> >> with 1.15-1, which for gnu.org, considering the speed they normally
> >> run at, is instantainious.  I've been running 1.15-1 since about a
> >> week after it became available without problems.
> >
> >Interesting.  Do you think that the behaviour I'm seeing is solely as
> > a result of 'tar' here?
> >
> >Is the behaviour I describe something that you believe *should* *not*
> >happen with AMANDA when using 'tar'?
> >
> I do not know this for a fact.  ISTR the file headers it made weren't 
> correct and recovery failures were the result.  Possibly someone else 
> can elaborate here?
>

It created proper archives, however it failed extracting archives that had
sparse files in them properly. RedHat still uses this version in RHEL4, but
has backported the fix for this problem from 1.15.1.

> >This package of 'tar' is the current default in Debian/Sarge and is
> >updated with various security issues without changing the version
> >number, so it's not entirely clear what version is really there under
> >the hood.
> 
> Which is exactly why I get this stuff (both tar and amanda) from the src 
> and build my own.  It Just Works(TM). :)
> 

I hope you build your own RPMs, since I know you use an RPM based system ;-)

Matt

-- 
Matt Hyclak
Department of Mathematics 
Department of Social Work
Ohio University
(740) 593-1263