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Date: Sat, 13 Dec 1997 12:21:46 -0800 (PST)
From: giffunip@asme.org
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Subject: bin/5284: pkg_create uses an unstandard tar 
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>Number:         5284
>Category:       bin
>Synopsis:       pkg_create uses an unstandard tar
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Class:          change-request
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Sat Dec 13 12:30:01 PST 1997
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Pedro Giffuni S.
>Organization:
U. Nacional de Colombia
>Release:        Last checked on 2.2.1-Release
>Environment:
not relevant
>Description:
GNU tar claims not to be conforming to Posix 1003.1. In order to be
really portable the packaging tools should depend on a standards
compliant tar utility.
>How-To-Repeat:
The author of 'star' reports the following errors:
- Many bugs in implementation and design.
  (e.g. when handling/creating multi volume archives)
- The second logical EOF block in GNU-tar archives is missing with a 50%
  chance. This will cause correctly working tar implementations to 
  complain about an illegal/missing EOF in the tar archive.
- Deeply nested directory trees will not be dumped, Error message is:
  Too many open files
- Hard links with long names to files with long names do not work.
- GNU-tar cannot read Posix compliant tar archives with 
  long file names if the filename prefix it at least 138 characters.
  GNU-tar will think that it found an extended sparse GNU tar archive
  and get out of sync for the rest of the archive.


>Fix:
Perhaps pax(1) should be used as a replacement...I heard that BSDI 
replaces tar with pax.
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: