On Sun, Jan 05, 2003 at 01:05:51AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Saturday 04 January 2003 18:42, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> >On Sat, Jan 04, 2003 at 04:35:48PM -0600, Douglas K. Rand wrote:
> >>
> >> ... . Amanda didn't care if the
> >> exclude file was there or not, and actually gnu-tar didn't care
> >> very much either. Gnu-tar emits a warning that the exclude file
> >> doesn't exist, and so it won't use it.
> >
> >I'm surprised at your observations.
> >gnutar on my system terminates with an error if the exclude file
> > is missing.
> >
> >OPPS, ran some tests last evening and assumed -- never assume --
> >that the error message, error exit status, and very fast
> > completion meant it did not do the tar dump.
> >
> >Just checked again.  Turns out it does.
> >
> >Sorry for the mis-information.
> 
> Jon, I wonder if that was one of the things adjusted in how tar 
> works between 1.13-19 and 1.13.-25 because I can recall in the 
> earlier days haveing it exit without generating the tarfile, and 
> that was the reason at the time.

<self-directed sarcasm>
Who was it that wrote in the messages above, "never assume"?
</self-directed sarcasm>

Gene's comment caused me to reconsider.  My "checked again" from above
included an assumption that I'm too embarassed to even describe.

Let me try to correct myself once again.

gnutar on my system terminates with an error if the exclude file is missing


Don't ask why :), but I have 9 releases of gnutar on my system:

    $ ls -l *gtar*
    -rwxr-xr-x   2 jon      staff     166676 Feb 14  2002 amgtar
    -r-xr-xr-x   2 root     other     127544 Feb 14  2002 gtar-1.13
    -rwxr-xr-x   1 root     other     138404 Feb 14  2002 gtar-1.13.17
    -rwxr-xr-x   1 jon      staff     143944 Feb 14  2002 gtar-1.13.19
    -rwxr-xr-x   1 jon      staff     146264 Feb 14  2002 gtar-1.13.20
    -rwxr-xr-x   1 jon      staff     163952 Feb 14  2002 gtar-1.13.21
    -rwxr-xr-x   1 jon      staff     164048 Feb 14  2002 gtar-1.13.22
    -rwxr-xr-x   1 jon      staff     164744 Feb 14  2002 gtar-1.13.23
    -rwxr-xr-x   1 jon      staff     166612 Feb 14  2002 gtar-1.13.24
    -rwxr-xr-x   2 jon      staff     166676 Feb 14  2002 gtar-1.13.25
    -r-xr-xr-x   2 root     other     127544 Feb 14  2002 gtar-sfw

Each of them, when run as follows, generate the same result.

    $ amgtar -X nosuchfile -cvf /tmp/tarball .
    amgtar: nosuchfile: No such file or directory
    amgtar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

and the output file "/tmp/tarball" is not created.

So I am surprised by Doug's observation to the contrary.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
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