Re: Tar error message

[ Sorry about the late reply. I've been travelinbg and am just catching ]
[ up on list mail.                                                      ]

On 14.08.01 at 15:09, Jim Hull <jhull@c5altus.com> wrote:

>Hi, I'm getting a message that says only "tar: /dev/tape:  Is a directory"
>when I try to write a tape and "tar: tape read error: Is a directory" when
>I try to extract.  I've been hamstrung over this for a day and a half. 
>Any help?

I dunno. :-)

The tar file is generated with GNU tar which uses some extensions that are
not usually available in non-GNU versions. The most common problem is that
GNU tar supports, and preserves, longer filenames then it's proprietary
conterparts. I've been told there are ways to work around this on the
recieveing end, but I'm not in a position to check this. You may want to
read your vendor's man page for tar to see if there are any options that
look likely to fix it.

At some point we'll fix this permanently (or, at least, we'll try to ;D).

It may also be an issue with your tape drive. I'm guessing at the tar file
beeing the culprit because we've had reports to that effect before, but
those error messages suggest to me that there is something wrong with your
tape drive.

I assume you've uncompressed the archive (e.g. `gzip -d validator.tar.gz`)
and that you are intentionally reading/writing from/to a tape device
instead of a file (e.g. `tar xvf validator.tar`).


As an aside, I would reccomend you get and install GNU tar and zip for your
platform. They are far preferable to whatever your vendor shipped in my
experience. They can be installed as "gtar" and "gzip" -- so they won't
conflict with whatever is installed allready -- and work nicely together --
so you can say `tar xzf validator.tar.gz` and decompress and extract it in
one fell swoop.

Received on Wednesday, 22 August 2001 22:29:17 UTC