Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Lone zero blocks

[Aaron Bentley]

Robert Collins wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-03-19 at 16:34, Aaron Bentley wrote:
> there was a recent nasty bug in debian tar related to zero's - see the
> changelog for moredetails on the problem & fix... may be related.

Ah, this is debian bug #235821
Apparently there are some differing ideas about the proper way to 
terminate tar files, and GNU tar was recently made stricter.  Now it's 
been relaxed, but it's unclear to me whether the archives do, in fact, 
violate the spec.

Also unclear to me: is it appropriate to re-archive such files, so long 
as the checksums are updated?  Or should we try to gag tar?  Messages 
like "Lone zero block" are unlikely to give users the warm fuzzies.

Aaron

--
Aaron Bentley
Director of Technology
Panometrics, Inc.