On Friday 18 February 2005 11:30, Eric Siegerman wrote:
>On Fri, Feb 18, 2005 at 11:36:46AM +0000, Thomas Charles Robinson 
wrote:
>> [an excellently clear, concise, and complete [1] problem report
>> -- thank you! -- which included the following:]
>>
>> gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--crc error
>
>All of tar's varied complaints appear to stem from corrupt input,
>which in turn is adequately explained by this message.
>
>Thus, either gzip or hardware looks like the culprit.  RAM is a
>good place to look, especially considering that the data being
>backed up all resides on the Amanda server; you're giving that
>box quite a workout.  The disk and its bus (SCSI, IDE, etc.) are
>possibilities too, but less likely IMO -- I'd expect the kernel
>to detect and report the I/O errors in that case.
>
>Not to completely rule out problems with Amanda itself -- I've
>learned never to rule *anything* out where computers are
>concerned (or humans for that matter :-/) -- but it seems
>unlikely.
>
>As for gtar, 1.13.25 is well regarded on this list.  'Nuff said,
>until its input is known to be good.  (After all, even if,
>hypothetically, tar were producing complete junk, gzip should be
>able to compress and decompress that junk without reporting CRC
>errors :-)
>
>> gzip-1.3.3-9
>
>... is a beta.

It might be a beta, but its a beta thats been used by the whole planet 
since back in 2002, without noticable errors.

>It might be worthwhile to try the latest released 
>version, 1.2.4.  From the web page, it looks as though that
>version can't handle files over 2 GB, so you'll have to split up
>any larger DLEs.  Or just disable them for the duration of the
>test -- no loss; it's not as if you have usable backups of them
>now :-(
>
>Another useful test would be to temporarily disable software
>compression completely.  That should fairly quickly tell you
>whether the corruption is occurring during gzipping (whether gzip
>itself or hardware is the ultimate source of the problem).
>
>> Lastly, I am currently using an nfs share for the holding disk but
>> this was NOT being used previously and I was still getting the
>> corruption mentioned.
>
>Hmm, did you ever run with local holding disk, while explicitly
>testing holding-disk files as you're doing now?  I.e. was there
>ever a point where neither NFS nor the tape drive was in the
>loop?  I'm wondering about the possibility that two independent
>sources of data corruption -- NFS and the tape subsystem -- might
>be confounding your attempts to isolate "the" problem.

Good thoughts, as always Eric.

>--
>
>|  | /\
>|
>|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        erics AT telepres DOT com
>|
>|  |  /
>
>The animal that coils in a circle is the serpent; that's why so
>many cults and myths of the serpent exist, because it's hard to
>represent the return of the sun by the coiling of a hippopotamus.
>       - Umberto Eco, "Foucault's Pendulum"

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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