[Bug-tar] gnutar exit status from SCHILY.* extensions, was: Re: bug in BSD tar?

[Chuck Swiger]

Hi--

I checked the GNU tar mailing list archives, and it seems that there has never 
been a similar bug report mentioned involving either star or BSD tar.  If 
we've got a test case and a workaround, at least the next intrepid person who 
searches the bug-tar archives can find this info. :-)

--
-Chuck

-------- Original Message --------
> Subject: bug in BSD tar?
> Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 21:49:37 +0100
> From: Steven Hartland <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
>
> When compressing files with specific filenames it appears that BSD
> tar is creating invalid archives which when handed to gnutar to
> expand it errors with the following:
> [log]
> tar -xvzf test.tar.gz
> tar: Ignoring unknown extended header keyword `SCHILY.dev'
> tar: Ignoring unknown extended header keyword `SCHILY.ino'
> tar: Ignoring unknown extended header keyword `SCHILY.nlink'
> cantiquedeno\353l1_loop.wav
> tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
> [/log]
>
> This archive contains just a single file with no special
> attributes yet BSD seems to be doing something strange due
> to the filename only.
>
> The following is the out of the filename using ls and find:
> address@hidden:music> ls -l cantiquede*
> -rw-r--r--  1 user  group  1766066 Feb  8 20:54 cantiquedeno?l1_loop.wav
> address@hidden:music> find . -name can\*
> ./cantiquedenoël1_loop.wav
>
> I've tested creating the tar with gtar and all is well when
> expanded so I can only conclude at this point that BSD is
> broken in some way by this strange filename.
>
> tar --version
> bsdtar 1.01.020, libarchive 1.02.006
> Copyright (C) 2003-2004 Tim Kientzle
>
>    Steve
[ ..thread continues... ]

Colin Percival <address@hidden> wrote:
[ ... ]
> GNU tar is broken.  POSIX specifically allows for vendor extensions (such
> as the SCHILY.* extensions which were introduced by star), and the correct
> way to handle them is by printing a warning message, ignoring the extension,
> and not treating it as an error.
>
> You can work around gtar's breakage by explicitly telling it to ignore these
> options via --pax-option="delete=SCHILY.*" .