On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 12:57:37AM -0800, Conrad T. Pino wrote:
> I want to be in the NetBSD camp and I'm porting a CVS backup script
> from Solaris 8 i386 to NetBSD 1.6ZG (GENERIC.MP) and "tar" is giving
> me grief:
> 
> tar: Unable to append, archive header flaw
> tar: Cannot append to an archive that may have flaws.

I think that was caused by the broken '-r' which was fixed lately.[1]

> 
> This issue was posted back in May 2003 and I didn't see a response:
> 
> http://mail-index.netbsd.org/current-users/2003/05/05/0006.html
> 
> Points where Martin and I have concerns and the extra I can add:
> 
> 1. Solaris "tar" will append to empty file i.e. "touch" works.
> I'm working around this with:

It seems this does still not work.

> (...)
> 2. After several files the "tar rf ..." command fails.

This should be fixed now.[1]

> (...)
> 3. A "tar tf" operation shows "header flaw" occurs BEFORE the
> end of archive:


This should be fixed now, too.[1]

> (...)
> Am I doing *something* wrong or is this a bug in NetBSD tar implementation?

I think it's a matter of philosophy, whether tar -rf to an empty file
(archive) should work or not. I feel it should, but well. The other
problems with appending hopefully are gone now.

Regards,

-Martin

[1]: http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/current-users/2004/01/30/0022.html, in
reply to ..../current-users/2004/01/30/0012.html.