Re: tar warning messages

On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 12:59:17PM -0500, Jingchun Chen wrote:
> Thanks to all the help from this mailing list now my Amanda seems to be 
> running smoothly. However, when I ran amrecover to recover files from tapes 
> (hard drives actually), I got this tar message for all the regular files I am 
> trying to retrieve, "implausibly old time stamp 1969-12-31 19:00:00". No 
> complaints for all the directories or subdirectories, except at the end, when 
> the very top level directory also got this message.
> 
> But it seems to recover all the files successfully. Of course the files can't 
> be that old, since I wasn't even born in 1969 :). Is it tar or amanda's 
> problem? I am using gtar-1.13.25 on the tape server and gtar-1.13.93 on the 
> client. I know Amanda manual mentioned that gtar-1.13.9x is having problem 
> creating index list. But is this message related to that bug?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Transcript:
> 
> amrecover> extract
> amrecover: warning: using /dev/null as the tape device will not work
> 
> Extracting files using tape drive /dev/null on host coil.
> The following tapes are needed: normal104
> 
> Restoring files into directory /root
> Continue [?/Y/n]?
> 
> Extracting files using tape drive /dev/null on host coil.
> Load tape normal104 now
> Continue [?/Y/n/s/t]?
> ./jchen/lab/
> ./jchen/lab/administrivia.solly/
> ./jchen/lab/administrivia.solly/critical-files/
> ./jchen/lab/administrivia.solly/critical-files/Xfree/
> ./jchen/lab/administrivia.solly/critical-files/amanda/
> tar: ./jchen/lab/administrivia.solly/critical-files/Xfree: implausibly old 
> time stamp 1969-12-31 19:00:00
> ....
> tar: ./jchen/lab: implausibly old time stamp 1969-12-31 19:00:00
> >amrecover
> 

Presumably it did recover the files though?
It could well be a gnutar version problem.

To let you know what is happening, there happens to be a zero in a field
where a date stamp should be.  Computer systems track time from some starting
point.  In unix's case, from midnight, Jan 1, 1970 -- In Greenwich England.
Apparently Ohio State is in the Eastern US time zone, thus the zero time
(unix's clock started) was locally 7PM the day before.

<ancient_unix_lore>
        Jan 1, 1970 was chosen because the unix developers were using
        computers from Digital Equipment Corporation called PDP-11/70.
        And that designation 11/70 became 1/1/70 for the clock.
        DMR (who should know) says this is untrue.  But a good story.
</ancient_unix_lore>


-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
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