Re: [Bug-tar] 'tar --version' in 1.14.90

[Richard Karnesky]

Thanks very much for the reply.

Joerg Schilling <address@hidden> wrote:
> > I noticed that the version string in the alpha release is 'tar (tar)
> > 1.14.90'.  Will this syntax be used for the next official release?
> >
> > The configure script for amanda[1] looks for '*GNU*tar*' when it checks
> > to  see what version of tar is present & fails the test since 'GNU'
> > isn't in  the string.  I have already notified the amanda developers,
> > but thought  other projects might do something similar to check if the
> > version of tar is  compatible with GNU tar.  Is there some other
> > preferred method to check  this in addition to the version number?
> >   [1]<http://www.amanda.org/>
>
> Good point. Also look at this:
>
> gnutar --version
> gnutar: star 1.5a54 (i386-pc-solaris2.9)
You are correct that star doesn't currently work with amanda.  The current 
'configure' correctly fails if the machine use 'star' rather than 'tar' 
(again because of the absense of 'GNU' in the output of 'gnutar 
--version').  I believe that you are correct about the lack of 
'--listed-incremental' being the reason for this.  I have asked on 
address@hidden about support for star.  I didn't get a decisive 
response about what is needed to get star to work properly.  Some have 
expressed interest in writing a quick-and-dirty wrapper for star to allow 
amanda to use it as if it were either GNU tar or dump.  I don't know how 
far along those efforts are.  Some others are hard at work developing the 
"Dumper API."  This is a much better solution anyway and would allow ANY 
program to serve as the dumper, including tar-1.14.90 and star.  Once 
again, I don't know how far along that is.

> I thought that amanda uses a heavily patched version of gnu tar 1.12.
> Isn't this amanda patch needed to make GNU tar's incrementals work? From
> my tests on GNU  tar-1.14.90 I can say that incremental restores with a
> vanilla GNU tar do not  even pass simple test cases. Could you comment
> this?
I'd be happy to comment, but don't know how helpful my comments will be. 
amanda-2.4.x does work with vanilla gnu tar 1.13.25 and above.  There are 
patches for earlier versions of tar-1.13 and for tar-1.12.  They did start 
out "heavy," but they seem to have gotten lighter as vanilla gnu tar has 
improved.

The latest releases have been steering towards getting amanda to work with 
various version of tar, rather than the other way around.  tar must work as 
expected (which is to say it must be in the path and must respond 
appropriately to a version check) at amanda's compile-time.  I use vanilla 
gnu tar between 1.13.25 and 1.14 on nearly all of our machines with no 
problems.

I'm afraid I can't comment on tar-1.14.90.  I merely encountered it on a 
new client I added & noticed that a simple archive and restore through 
amanda worked.  I didn't want to use such a new release, so installed an 
older version to handle backups.

I only commented on the output of --version out of genuine interest & with 
hope that the next releases will continue to work with amanda.

--Richard Karnesky