Ah, so perhaps focusing on tar is "barking up the wrong tree" !

We know AMANDA uses some root-level modules that require suid to
function correctly.  Could it be that this is going on with AMANDA such
that it conflicts with AIX in a manner that locks (or won't unlock)
amandates ?

Is there a howto for AMANDA and AIX.  Not many folks still using AIX
these days ...

On Thu, 2008-05-22 at 15:35 -0400, Dustin J. Mitchell wrote:
> On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Freels, James D. <freelsjd AT ornl DOT gov> 
> wrote:
> > We took a look at uustat and the only locked files were some batch jobs
> > we had running.  In addition, we have rebooted while trying to debug
> > this, and have only run amanda after the reboot while debugging.  So, if
> > there is something else locking /etc/amandates, what would it be beside
> > AMANDA ?
> 
> I'm not sure what to suggest, then.  gnutar doesn't write to
> /etc/amandates -- Amanda does -- so it would be unusual for gnutar to
> be locking it.  One solution may be to simply comment out the code
> that is locking amandates, on the assumption that you are not using
> it.
> 
> Dustin
> 
James D. Freels, Ph.D.
Senior Research Staff
High Flux Isotope Reactor
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
http://www.comsol.com/academic/papers/1780