On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 02:53:59PM -0400, John D. Bickle wrote:
> Hi folks.
> 
> I have a lot of log files that change in size almost constantly, and i 
> understand that when tar returns an error while trying to archive a file 
> whose size has changed, the entire dump of the filesystem fails (i understand 
> this problem exists regardless of what version of tar you are using, but 
> please correct me if i am wrong).
> 
> Does anyone how to prevent tar from returning this error (whether a 
> particular version of tar + flag, a hack, a patch, or whatever), and can you 
> please send me the URL to this version/doc?
> 
> I have tried using dump instead of tar, but i suppose this will result in the 
> same problem and it doesn't work anyway for reasons best addressed in a 
> seperate e-mail.
> 
> I tried "googling" this problem, but to no avail.
> 

Is this a problem you are having or just something you understand?

I believe that when amanda runs gnutar it uses the "--ignore-failed-read" 
option.
This option has the effect of allowing that file to be skipped but continues the
dump.  At the end, gnutar exits with an non-zero exit status if the option was
used AND a file had read errors.

On most of my systems this non-zero status is not a problem.  On my cygwin 
client
it did cause problems so I modified tar's source code to force a zero exits 
status.


Depending on the system you are using, you may be able to make a readonly 
"snapshot"
of the file system before the dump/tar.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
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 Princeton, NJ  08540-4322      (609) 683-7220 (fax)