I think that I found out MY problem - MY since I did it to myself.
But I learned :)

First, I apologize for the previous test - I didn't mount the correct tape
and that's why it was failing...

I got a copy of 1.13.25 at the location you pointed me to.
Rebuild it from the source and try on a small testcase which
I thought was representating my problem.

ln -s /app/testlink /testlink  (/app/testlink does not exist)
ln -s /testlink /tmp/testlink
and I backed up and restored /tmp/tetstlink using both tars.
Both versions worked fine and restore the link successfully ?!

I went directly to amanda tape (virtual tapes) and I listed its content
(dd if=/dev/tape bs=32k skip=1 | tar tvfz - | grep testlink) and it reports:
lrwxrwxrwx root/system       0 2005-09-28 12:55:48 ./testlink -> /testlink

In fact, same than for the tape that I have hard time to restore from:
lrwxrwxrwx root/system           0 2004-07-05 23:33:59 ./dbsp -> /dbsp

Both seem perfect.
I was ready to give up when I thought about something.

And yesterday as the user who wanted his files was looking over
mu shoulders, I did "break" amrecover after the user saw all his files
passed by - I didn't wait for amrecover to terminate !
Never a good idea to be impatient.

I rerun this theory on the link itself today and sure enough,
it took a few seconds for the file to appear but 9 minutes for
the link to be restored proprely. I guess this is how GnuTar works...

l dbsp

----------   1 root     system            0 Sep 28 13:41 dbsp
...

l dbsp

lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     system            5 Sep 28 13:50 dbsp -> /dbsp


Load tape monthly4 now
Continue [?/Y/n/s/t]?
./dbsp
Invalid command - syntax error
amrecover> quit

I also never saw the "Invalid command - syntax error" at the end of the
restore since I never left it go as far - the error comes with both
1.13.25 and 1.15.1 but this time, it does not seem to have impacted my
restore...

So, thank you again for your help !
Jerome

To: <amanda-users AT amanda DOT org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 12:13 PM
Subject: Re: Symbolic links

On Wed, Sep 28, 2005 at 11:58:21AM -0700, Jerome Pioux wrote:

>get/build a copy of 1.13.25

I got:
>tar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.13

Do not use that version.
It is known to have defects that affect amanda.

Don't know where to find the .25 ?...

Don't know where aix binaries might be found.
Source can be found at ftp://alpha.gnu.org

When I tried to restore the link, it failed:

...

extract_list - child returned non-zero status: 1

So I suppose that tar 1.13 can't read a backup that was done by 1.15 - am
I
correct?

The error could have been in the saving or in the recovery.

When you build/get 1.13.25 do the above test, but if it fails
also do a dump and recover with 1.13.25 before saying it really failed.

--
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
JG Computing
4455 Province Line Road        (609) 252-0159
Princeton, NJ  08540-4322      (609) 683-7220 (fax)