Re: [Bug-tar] Small bug in tar-1.29

[Rob Gross]

Hi, Ralph,

Thanks for helping to figure out where the problem is.  You wrote:

 > > This report is for tar-1.29, compiled and installed on Mac El Capitan.
 > > When the environment variable "LANG" is not set, tar cannot handle a
 > > compressed archive--the error is "broken pipe".  For example:
 > >
 > >     m3rgma0371carn - T tar tvzf archive.tgz
 > >     gnutar: Child died with signal 11
 > >     gnutar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
 > >     m3rgma0371carn - T $ export LANG=" "
 > >     m3rgma0371carn - T $ tar tvzf archive.tgz
 > >     drwxr-xr-x gross/staff       0 2016-08-29 12:10 hsperfdata_gross/
 > >     drwx------ gross/staff       0 2016-08-13 [...]
 > >
 > > There is no problem if I gunzip the archive first, and then run tar.
 >
 > Setting LANG to a space doesn't tell us what it and other locale
 > environment variables were set to, if they were set, before then.  Can
 > we have the output of these commands when tar fails.
 >     locale
 >     env | egrep '^(LANG|LC_)' | cat -et

    m3rgma0371carn - T $ unset LANG
    m3rgma0371carn - T $ gnutar -tvf archive.tgz
    gnutar: Child died with signal 11
    gnutar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
    m3rgma0371carn - T $ locale
    LANG=
    LC_COLLATE="C"
    LC_CTYPE="C"
    LC_MESSAGES="C"
    LC_MONETARY="C"
    LC_NUMERIC="C"
    LC_TIME="C"
    LC_ALL=
    m3rgma0371carn - T $ env | egrep '^(LANG|LC_)' | cat -et
    m3rgma0371carn - T $

 > BTW, I assume setting LANG to space isn't particularly valid.  If
 > you want to reset your locale to the old simple one, do `export
 > LC_ALL=C'.

That was part of the point.  LANG did not need to be set to a valid
locale in order to get tar to work.  But it apparently needed to be
set to something.  For whatever reason, my login was not setting LANG
or LC_ALL, and that made gnutar unhappy.

Thanks.  I'm happy to provide more information if that helps track
down the bug.--Rob

--
Rob Gross                              (617) 552-3758
Department of Mathematics              http://fmwww.bc.edu/gross/
Boston College                         address@hidden
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467-3806