tar and gzip

[Joerg Schilling]

In article <x7wuesu88v.fsf@bolo.xenadyne.com>,
Sean Burke <burke_sp31415@pacbell.net> wrote:

>give the resulting file the .tgz extension.
>

>> I get an error when I try to tar -cvzf a file, saying the z in not a valid
>> variable. Does this mean I need to install GNUgzip?

>
>It means you need to install gnu tar, or use
>the method

GNU tar does not create standard compliant TAR archives, use star instead:

[url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star[/url]
[url]http://www.blastwave.org/packages.php[/url]


--
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[email]js@cs.tu-berlin.de[/email] (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1
[email]schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de[/email] (work) chars I am J"org Schilling
URL: [url]http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/usr/schilling[/url] [url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily[/url]

[Joerg Schilling]

In article <x7wuesu88v.fsf@bolo.xenadyne.com>,
Sean Burke <burke_sp31415@pacbell.net> wrote:

>give the resulting file the .tgz extension.
>

>> I get an error when I try to tar -cvzf a file, saying the z in not a valid
>> variable. Does this mean I need to install GNUgzip?

>
>It means you need to install gnu tar, or use
>the method

GNU tar does not create standard compliant TAR archives, use star instead:

[url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star[/url]
[url]http://www.blastwave.org/packages.php[/url]


--
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[email]js@cs.tu-berlin.de[/email] (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1
[email]schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de[/email] (work) chars I am J"org Schilling
URL: [url]http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/usr/schilling[/url] [url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily[/url]

[Ian Springer]

> >give the resulting file the .tgz extension.

> >

> >> I get an error when I try to tar -cvzf a file, saying the z in not a

valid

> >> variable. Does this mean I need to install GNUgzip?

> >
> >It means you need to install gnu tar, or use
> >the method

>
> GNU tar does not create standard compliant TAR archives, use star instead:
>
> [url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star[/url]
> [url]http://www.blastwave.org/packages.php[/url]

for hp-ux star binaries -
[url]http://geocities.com/ian_springer/hpux_binaries.html#schily[/url] (not supported
by HP!)

[Ian Springer]

> >give the resulting file the .tgz extension.

> >

> >> I get an error when I try to tar -cvzf a file, saying the z in not a

valid

> >> variable. Does this mean I need to install GNUgzip?

> >
> >It means you need to install gnu tar, or use
> >the method

>
> GNU tar does not create standard compliant TAR archives, use star instead:
>
> [url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star[/url]
> [url]http://www.blastwave.org/packages.php[/url]

for hp-ux star binaries -
[url]http://geocities.com/ian_springer/hpux_binaries.html#schily[/url] (not supported
by HP!)

[Doug Burton]

To copy files to a tarball and gzip at the same time.
tar cvf - ? | gzip -9> filename.tar.gz

NOTE:
The question mark (?) is really supposed to be there.


On Tue, 8 Jul 2003 13:24:45 -0500, "LHradowy"
<laura.hradowy@NOSPAM.mts.ca> wrote:

>Let me get this correct...
>If I tar cvf file.tar| gzip it creates a tar file in memory (or on
>disk?) then pipes it to gzip to compress it. So if I have a directory the
>has 8 GB in size and I want to tar and compress it, I would tar the file to
>8GB in size the compress it. So in essence I need an additional 8 GB of
>space?
>
>Does tar -cvzf file.tar compress as it tars, does it need additional size
>allocation?
>
>I get an error when I try to tar -cvzf a file, saying the z in not a valid
>variable. Does this mean I need to install GNUgzip?
>
>

Doug
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[url]http://home.tampabay.rr.com/batcave/unixnotes.htm[/url]
[url]http://home.tampabay.rr.com/batcave/ServerBuilds.htm[/url]
[url]http://home.tampabay.rr.com/batcave/ignite.htm[/url]
[url]http://home.tampabay.rr.com/batcave/GSPinfo.htm[/url]
[url]http://home.tampabay.rr.com/batcave/inetd_conf.htm[/url]

[Doug Burton]

To copy files to a tarball and gzip at the same time.
tar cvf - ? | gzip -9> filename.tar.gz

NOTE:
The question mark (?) is really supposed to be there.


On Tue, 8 Jul 2003 13:24:45 -0500, "LHradowy"
<laura.hradowy@NOSPAM.mts.ca> wrote:

>Let me get this correct...
>If I tar cvf file.tar| gzip it creates a tar file in memory (or on
>disk?) then pipes it to gzip to compress it. So if I have a directory the
>has 8 GB in size and I want to tar and compress it, I would tar the file to
>8GB in size the compress it. So in essence I need an additional 8 GB of
>space?
>
>Does tar -cvzf file.tar compress as it tars, does it need additional size
>allocation?
>
>I get an error when I try to tar -cvzf a file, saying the z in not a valid
>variable. Does this mean I need to install GNUgzip?
>
>

Doug
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[url]http://home.tampabay.rr.com/batcave/unixnotes.htm[/url]
[url]http://home.tampabay.rr.com/batcave/ServerBuilds.htm[/url]
[url]http://home.tampabay.rr.com/batcave/ignite.htm[/url]
[url]http://home.tampabay.rr.com/batcave/GSPinfo.htm[/url]
[url]http://home.tampabay.rr.com/batcave/inetd_conf.htm[/url]

[Barry Margolin]

In article <3f0d359d.1163032@news-server.tampabay.rr.com>,
Doug Burton <dburton30@hotmail.com> wrote:

>To copy files to a tarball and gzip at the same time.
>tar cvf - ? | gzip -9> filename.tar.gz
>
>NOTE:
>The question mark (?) is really supposed to be there.

Why is the question mark there? This will only get files and
subdirectories with single-character names.

--
Barry Margolin, [email]barry.margolin@level3.com[/email]
Level(3), Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.

[Barry Margolin]

In article <3f0d359d.1163032@news-server.tampabay.rr.com>,
Doug Burton <dburton30@hotmail.com> wrote:

>To copy files to a tarball and gzip at the same time.
>tar cvf - ? | gzip -9> filename.tar.gz
>
>NOTE:
>The question mark (?) is really supposed to be there.

Why is the question mark there? This will only get files and
subdirectories with single-character names.

--
Barry Margolin, [email]barry.margolin@level3.com[/email]
Level(3), Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.

[Karl-Jose Filler]

LHradowy wrote:

> Let me get this correct...
> If I tar cvf file.tar| gzip it creates a tar file in memory (or on
> disk?) then pipes it to gzip to compress it. So if I have a directory the
> has 8 GB in size and I want to tar and compress it, I would tar the file to
> 8GB in size the compress it. So in essence I need an additional 8 GB of
> space?

You need to spectofy the directory

tar cvf file.tar directory | gzip > tarfile.tar.gz

>
>
> Does tar -cvzf file.tar compress as it tars, does it need additional size
> allocation?

this "z" is an option for gnu tar, not hpux tar
the compressing is done via pipes

> I get an error when I try to tar -cvzf a file, saying the z in not a valid
> variable. Does this mean I need to install GNUgzip?

more gzip and fnu tar

Jose

[Karl-Jose Filler]

LHradowy wrote:

> Let me get this correct...
> If I tar cvf file.tar| gzip it creates a tar file in memory (or on
> disk?) then pipes it to gzip to compress it. So if I have a directory the
> has 8 GB in size and I want to tar and compress it, I would tar the file to
> 8GB in size the compress it. So in essence I need an additional 8 GB of
> space?

You need to spectofy the directory

tar cvf file.tar directory | gzip > tarfile.tar.gz

>
>
> Does tar -cvzf file.tar compress as it tars, does it need additional size
> allocation?

this "z" is an option for gnu tar, not hpux tar
the compressing is done via pipes

> I get an error when I try to tar -cvzf a file, saying the z in not a valid
> variable. Does this mean I need to install GNUgzip?

more gzip and fnu tar

Jose

[Bill Marcum]

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:45:41 GMT, Doug Burton
<dburton30@hotmail.com> wrote:

> To copy files to a tarball and gzip at the same time.
> tar cvf - ? | gzip -9> filename.tar.gz
>
> NOTE:
> The question mark (?) is really supposed to be there.
>

Why?

--
Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don't know what I want to be when
I grow up.
-- Peter Drucker

[Bill Marcum]

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:45:41 GMT, Doug Burton
<dburton30@hotmail.com> wrote:

> To copy files to a tarball and gzip at the same time.
> tar cvf - ? | gzip -9> filename.tar.gz
>
> NOTE:
> The question mark (?) is really supposed to be there.
>

Why?

--
Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don't know what I want to be when
I grow up.
-- Peter Drucker

[James Antill]

On Tue, 08 Jul 2003 23:27:16 +0000, Joerg Schilling wrote:

> In article <x7wuesu88v.fsf@bolo.xenadyne.com>,
> Sean Burke <burke_sp31415@pacbell.net> wrote:
>

>>give the resulting file the .tgz extension.
>>

>>> I get an error when I try to tar -cvzf a file, saying the z in not a valid
>>> variable. Does this mean I need to install GNUgzip?

>>
>>It means you need to install gnu tar, or use
>>the method

>
> GNU tar does not create standard compliant TAR archives, use star instead:

Of course, 1) No one cares it's not "std. compliant" as it's real life
compliant. 2) star has't fixed a bunch of the ways you can attack tar that
have been fixed in GNU tar for a long time. 3) star's command line is
annoyingly different.

--
James Antill -- [email]james@and.org[/email]
Need an efficent and powerful string library for C?
[url]http://www.and.org/vstr/[/url]

[James Antill]

On Tue, 08 Jul 2003 23:27:16 +0000, Joerg Schilling wrote:

> In article <x7wuesu88v.fsf@bolo.xenadyne.com>,
> Sean Burke <burke_sp31415@pacbell.net> wrote:
>

>>give the resulting file the .tgz extension.
>>

>>> I get an error when I try to tar -cvzf a file, saying the z in not a valid
>>> variable. Does this mean I need to install GNUgzip?

>>
>>It means you need to install gnu tar, or use
>>the method

>
> GNU tar does not create standard compliant TAR archives, use star instead:

Of course, 1) No one cares it's not "std. compliant" as it's real life
compliant. 2) star has't fixed a bunch of the ways you can attack tar that
have been fixed in GNU tar for a long time. 3) star's command line is
annoyingly different.

--
James Antill -- [email]james@and.org[/email]
Need an efficent and powerful string library for C?
[url]http://www.and.org/vstr/[/url]

[Joerg Schilling]

In article <pan.2003.07.12.03.08.44.944236@and.org>,
James Antill <james-netnews@and.org> wrote:

>> GNU tar does not create standard compliant TAR archives, use star instead:

>
> Of course, 1) No one cares it's not "std. compliant" as it's real life
>compliant.

Looks like you are missing the needed experience for the real life problems
with GNU tar. While many of the standard deviation in GNU tar have not been a
problem for many years, it seems that they hit people today. About a year ago,
people started to get problems with the mozilla source tar ball because it
has been created with GNU tar. It was impossible to extract this source with
Sun's tar because the tar ball created by GNU tar was not standard compliant.
Sun's tar reported a 'directory checksum error' which shows that there is a hard
deviation from the standard....

> 2) star has't fixed a bunch of the ways you can attack tar that
>have been fixed in GNU tar for a long time.

So far, nobody did report any problem you seem to refer to....

If you don't tell us what you are talking about, it is the best to just ignore
this objkection from you.

3) star's command line is

>annoyingly different.

It is just the other way round: star's command line is UNIX-98 compliant and
tries it's best to follow POSIX command line syntax guidlines.

GNU tar is not providing a UNIX-98 compliant command line syntax and many other
things in the GNU tar commans line syntay are annoyingly different to all other
tar implementations including star.

--
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[email]js@cs.tu-berlin.de[/email] (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1
[email]schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de[/email] (work) chars I am J"org Schilling
URL: [url]http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/usr/schilling[/url] [url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily[/url]

[Walter Briscoe]

In message <pan.2003.07.12.03.08.44.944236@and.org> of Fri, 11 Jul 2003
23:08:49 in comp.unix.misc, James Antill <james-netnews@and.org> writes

>On Tue, 08 Jul 2003 23:27:16 +0000, Joerg Schilling wrote:
>

>> In article <x7wuesu88v.fsf@bolo.xenadyne.com>,
>> Sean Burke <burke_sp31415@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>

>>>give the resulting file the .tgz extension.
>>>
>>>> I get an error when I try to tar -cvzf a file, saying the z in not a valid
>>>> variable. Does this mean I need to install GNUgzip?
>>>
>>>It means you need to install gnu tar, or use
>>>the method

>>
>> GNU tar does not create standard compliant TAR archives, use star instead:

Chapter & verse? I presume "standard compliant" means compliant with
[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/utilities/pax.html[/url]

>
> Of course, 1) No one cares it's not "std. compliant" as it's real life
>compliant. 2) star has't fixed a bunch of the ways you can attack tar that
>have been fixed in GNU tar for a long time. 3) star's command line is
>annoyingly different.
>

Details?
--
Walter Briscoe

[Joerg Schilling]

In article <pan.2003.07.12.03.08.44.944236@and.org>,
James Antill <james-netnews@and.org> wrote:

>> GNU tar does not create standard compliant TAR archives, use star instead:

>
> Of course, 1) No one cares it's not "std. compliant" as it's real life
>compliant.

Looks like you are missing the needed experience for the real life problems
with GNU tar. While many of the standard deviation in GNU tar have not been a
problem for many years, it seems that they hit people today. About a year ago,
people started to get problems with the mozilla source tar ball because it
has been created with GNU tar. It was impossible to extract this source with
Sun's tar because the tar ball created by GNU tar was not standard compliant.
Sun's tar reported a 'directory checksum error' which shows that there is a
hard deviation from the standard....

> 2) star has't fixed a bunch of the ways you can attack tar that
>have been fixed in GNU tar for a long time.

So far, nobody did report any problem you seem to refer to....

If you don't tell us what you are talking about, it is the best to just ignore
this objection from you.

Otherwise tell us what you mean: What excaptly are you talking abut and how
exactly has this been fixed in GNU tar. But keep in mind that I will not
add "fixes" that will cause bigger problems than those originally present....

There is currently not a single reported but unfixed bug in star. GNU tar did
not even fix all of the bugs I reported around 1994! As in 1998 not a single
bug reported in 1994 has been fixed in GNU tar, I gave up reporting GNU tar
bugs. There are many more than I have documented in

[url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star/README.otherbugs[/url]
and
[url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star/testscripts/README.gtarfail[/url]

While star has a lot more features than GNU tar (once you start to use them
you would never again like to use GNU tar) I sometimes tried to implement a
feature found in GNU tar but at that time not yet in star. When I though about
problems in a possible implementation, and checked GNU tar, I always found a bug
in GNU tar.

Many of those bugs are related to the multivolume features in GNU tar. So far I
can tell, the only place where GNU tar currently has a better implementation is
when it comes to integer overflows in user/group ids. But even there you may
only rely in problem reporting from GNU tar not in a handling of the resulting
problem that is always how you would expect it to be done.

3) star's command line is

>annoyingly different.

It is just the other way round: star's command line is UNIX-98 compliant and
tries it's best to follow POSIX command line syntax guidlines.

GNU tar is _not_ providing a UNIX-98 compliant command line syntax and many other
things in the GNU tar commans line syntay are annoyingly different to all other
tar implementations including star.

In case you are a Linux follower: star is even 100% LSB compliant and may be used
without any problem in 100% LSB compliant Linux systems:

[url]http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/refspecs/LSB_1.3.0/gLSB/gLSB/tar.html[/url]

Conclusion: it seems that you never used star and you for unknown reason prefer
the annoyingly different command line syntax from GNU tar.

As I already wrote above: all people who started to use star in the past would
never revert to another tar implemantetion later.

--
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[email]js@cs.tu-berlin.de[/email] (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1
[email]schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de[/email] (work) chars I am J"org Schilling
URL: [url]http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/usr/schilling[/url] [url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily[/url]

[Joerg Schilling]

In article <pan.2003.07.12.03.08.44.944236@and.org>,
James Antill <james-netnews@and.org> wrote:

>> GNU tar does not create standard compliant TAR archives, use star instead:

>
> Of course, 1) No one cares it's not "std. compliant" as it's real life
>compliant.

Looks like you are missing the needed experience for the real life problems
with GNU tar. While many of the standard deviation in GNU tar have not been a
problem for many years, it seems that they hit people today. About a year ago,
people started to get problems with the mozilla source tar ball because it
has been created with GNU tar. It was impossible to extract this source with
Sun's tar because the tar ball created by GNU tar was not standard compliant.
Sun's tar reported a 'directory checksum error' which shows that there is a
hard deviation from the standard....

> 2) star has't fixed a bunch of the ways you can attack tar that
>have been fixed in GNU tar for a long time.

So far, nobody did report any problem you seem to refer to....

If you don't tell us what you are talking about, it is the best to just ignore
this objection from you.

Otherwise tell us what you mean: What excaptly are you talking abut and how
exactly has this been fixed in GNU tar. But keep in mind that I will not
add "fixes" that will cause bigger problems than those originally present....

There is currently not a single reported but unfixed bug in star. GNU tar did
not even fix all of the bugs I reported around 1994! As in 1998 not a single
bug reported in 1994 has been fixed in GNU tar, I gave up reporting GNU tar
bugs. There are many more than I have documented in

[url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star/README.otherbugs[/url]
and
[url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star/testscripts/README.gtarfail[/url]

While star has a lot more features than GNU tar (once you start to use them
you would never again like to use GNU tar) I sometimes tried to implement a
feature found in GNU tar but at that time not yet in star. When I though about
problems in a possible implementation, and checked GNU tar, I always found a bug
in GNU tar.

Many of those bugs are related to the multivolume features in GNU tar. So far I
can tell, the only place where GNU tar currently has a better implementation is
when it comes to integer overflows in user/group ids. But even there you may
only rely in problem reporting from GNU tar not in a handling of the resulting
problem that is always how you would expect it to be done.

3) star's command line is

>annoyingly different.

It is just the other way round: star's command line is UNIX-98 compliant and
tries it's best to follow POSIX command line syntax guidlines.

GNU tar is _not_ providing a UNIX-98 compliant command line syntax and many other
things in the GNU tar commans line syntay are annoyingly different to all other
tar implementations including star.

In case you are a Linux follower: star is even 100% LSB compliant and may be used
without any problem in 100% LSB compliant Linux systems:

[url]http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/refspecs/LSB_1.3.0/gLSB/gLSB/tar.html[/url]

Conclusion: it seems that you never used star and you for unknown reason prefer
the annoyingly different command line syntax from GNU tar.

As I already wrote above: all people who started to use star in the past would
never revert to another tar implemantetion later.

--
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[email]js@cs.tu-berlin.de[/email] (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1
[email]schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de[/email] (work) chars I am J"org Schilling
URL: [url]http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/usr/schilling[/url] [url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily[/url]

[Joerg Schilling]

In article <AImnELE66$D$Ewtf@ponle.demon.co.uk>,
Walter Briscoe <wbriscoe@ponle.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>In message <pan.2003.07.12.03.08.44.944236@and.org> of Fri, 11 Jul 2003
>23:08:49 in comp.unix.misc, James Antill <james-netnews@and.org> writes

>>>>give the resulting file the .tgz extension.
>>>>
>>>>> I get an error when I try to tar -cvzf a file, saying the z in not a valid
>>>>> variable. Does this mean I need to install GNUgzip?
>>>>
>>>>It means you need to install gnu tar, or use
>>>>the method
>>>
>>> GNU tar does not create standard compliant TAR archives, use star instead:

>Chapter & verse? I presume "standard compliant" means compliant with
>[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/utilities/pax.html[/url]

See later for the standard you mention here.....

First, there is [url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xcu/pax.html[/url]
which is commonly called UNIX-98. The TAR archive standard format
described in this standard is identical to POSIX.1-1990, star is the only known
TAR implementation that correectly implements this standard. GNU tar does not
even follow this standard although it's precursor (PD-tar) where GNU tar has
been derived from did implement a clean subset of the POSIX standard in 1987.
The fact that GNU tar is not POSIX compliant has been "implemented" by FSF -
most likely by Jay Fenlason (hack@ai.mit.edu).

Unfortunately, not even the officiel PAX reference implementation implements
[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xcu/pax.html[/url] correctly. To learn
where exactly the deviations are, get a recent star source, e.g.

[url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star/alpha/star-1.5a16.tar.gz[/url]

and use the program called 'tartest' together with the related documentation.
This of course may also used to understand why GNU tar is not POSIX archive
compliant.

Now to your URL
[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/utilities/pax.html[/url]

it describes a new TAR format called 'PAX' which is POSIX.1-1990 TAR + extended
TAR headers. Star is currently the only program that implements the 'PAX'
archive format from
[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/utilities/pax.html[/url]

>> Of course, 1) No one cares it's not "std. compliant" as it's real life
>>compliant. 2) star has't fixed a bunch of the ways you can attack tar that
>>have been fixed in GNU tar for a long time. 3) star's command line is
>>annoyingly different.
>>

>Details?

Star implements a command line parser that is compliant to:

[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xcu/tar.html[/url]

GNU tar does not.

Star in addition tries to follow
[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xbd/utilconv.html[/url] and
[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/basedefs/xbd_chap12.html[/url]
as best as possible with respect to:

[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xcu/tar.html[/url]


GNU tar implemenets _and_ documents a command line syntax driven by what
getopt() supports. Note that this is _not_ what POSIX defines.
POSIX defines that the official interface is what the documentation for
the program defines - even if getopt() would allow other things in addition.
POSIX defines getopt() but does _not_ require to use it! Star uses getargs()
which is older and more powerful than getopt() and which follows the POSIX
guidelines.

A big problem with GNU tar is that its documents describe a syntax like

gtar -cbf 126 /dev/rmt/0 ....

which is definitely not compliant with any POSIX document. A program like star
that better follows POSIX requires

star -c -b 126 -f /dev/rmt/0 ...

instead.

Sometimes I get the impression that there are people besides Microsoft who
believe that it os better not to follow standards but by creating 'own
standards'.

--
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[email]js@cs.tu-berlin.de[/email] (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1
[email]schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de[/email] (work) chars I am J"org Schilling
URL: [url]http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/usr/schilling[/url] [url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily[/url]

[Joerg Schilling]

In article <AImnELE66$D$Ewtf@ponle.demon.co.uk>,
Walter Briscoe <wbriscoe@ponle.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>In message <pan.2003.07.12.03.08.44.944236@and.org> of Fri, 11 Jul 2003
>23:08:49 in comp.unix.misc, James Antill <james-netnews@and.org> writes

>>>>give the resulting file the .tgz extension.
>>>>
>>>>> I get an error when I try to tar -cvzf a file, saying the z in not a valid
>>>>> variable. Does this mean I need to install GNUgzip?
>>>>
>>>>It means you need to install gnu tar, or use
>>>>the method
>>>
>>> GNU tar does not create standard compliant TAR archives, use star instead:

>Chapter & verse? I presume "standard compliant" means compliant with
>[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/utilities/pax.html[/url]

See later for the standard you mention here.....

First, there is [url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xcu/pax.html[/url]
which is commonly called UNIX-98. The TAR archive standard format
described in this standard is identical to POSIX.1-1990, star is the only known
TAR implementation that correectly implements this standard. GNU tar does not
even follow this standard although it's precursor (PD-tar) where GNU tar has
been derived from did implement a clean subset of the POSIX standard in 1987.
The fact that GNU tar is not POSIX compliant has been "implemented" by FSF -
most likely by Jay Fenlason (hack@ai.mit.edu).

Unfortunately, not even the officiel PAX reference implementation implements
[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xcu/pax.html[/url] correctly. To learn
where exactly the deviations are, get a recent star source, e.g.

[url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star/alpha/star-1.5a16.tar.gz[/url]

and use the program called 'tartest' together with the related documentation.
This of course may also used to understand why GNU tar is not POSIX archive
compliant.

Now to your URL
[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/utilities/pax.html[/url]

it describes a new TAR format called 'PAX' which is POSIX.1-1990 TAR + extended
TAR headers. Star is currently the only program that implements the 'PAX'
archive format from
[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/utilities/pax.html[/url]

>> Of course, 1) No one cares it's not "std. compliant" as it's real life
>>compliant. 2) star has't fixed a bunch of the ways you can attack tar that
>>have been fixed in GNU tar for a long time. 3) star's command line is
>>annoyingly different.
>>

>Details?

Star implements a command line parser that is compliant to:

[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xcu/tar.html[/url]

GNU tar does not.

Star in addition tries to follow
[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xbd/utilconv.html[/url] and
[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/basedefs/xbd_chap12.html[/url]
as best as possible with respect to:

[url]http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xcu/tar.html[/url]


GNU tar implemenets _and_ documents a command line syntax driven by what
getopt() supports. Note that this is _not_ what POSIX defines.
POSIX defines that the official interface is what the documentation for
the program defines - even if getopt() would allow other things in addition.
POSIX defines getopt() but does _not_ require to use it! Star uses getargs()
which is older and more powerful than getopt() and which follows the POSIX
guidelines.

A big problem with GNU tar is that its documents describe a syntax like

gtar -cbf 126 /dev/rmt/0 ....

which is definitely not compliant with any POSIX document. A program like star
that better follows POSIX requires

star -c -b 126 -f /dev/rmt/0 ...

instead.

Sometimes I get the impression that there are people besides Microsoft who
believe that it os better not to follow standards but by creating 'own
standards'.

--
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[email]js@cs.tu-berlin.de[/email] (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1
[email]schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de[/email] (work) chars I am J"org Schilling
URL: [url]http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/usr/schilling[/url] [url]ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily[/url]