[Bug-gnu-utils] Problem with tar (GNU tar) 1.13.17

[John Summerfield]

Picture this:

I have a dud hard disk. It works, but there's a bad rergion. Since it's under 
warranty, I can take it back (and, lucky me) get an exchange on the spot.

I back it up, and with a bit of fiddling, I get a backup that fits on the 4 
Gbyte ("8 gigabytes with compression" - I have compression on) tape.

I get the replacement disk, install it, partition * format it, and restore 
from the tape.

Here's what happened:

ash-2.03# tar xp -C /new/ -f /dev/st0
tar: : Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory
tar: Archive contains future timestamp 2020-01-05 13:11:29
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
bash-2.03#

It took a few hours (well, 2-3).

I don't know about you, but I would like to know what these messages are 
about. I had to resort to tar -d to find out. This took more hours.

Please, update tar so it's immediately apparently (and preferably in English 
or whatever native language applies) just what's wrong.

Here's what I found out from "tar -d --verbose"

 address@hidden summer]$ grep -2 tar: /misc/mo/tar.verify.log
boot/boot.0800

tar: : Warning: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
lost+found/
boot/
--
usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/pgp263is.tar.gz
usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/makefile.sudo.patch
tar: Archive contains future timestamp 2020-01-05 21:11:29
usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/kdevelop-alpha.patch
usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/pgp263is.linux.patch
--
var/lock/console/
var/lock/console/summer
tar: var/lock/console/summer: Warning: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
var/lock/samba/
var/lock/xemacs/
var/lock/console.lock
tar : Warning: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
var/nis/
var/preserve/
address@hidden summer]$ 

Even from this it's not immediately apparent what that mkdir message was about 
- I guess list+found. Similarly, it's not clear which file was last modified 
in 2020.

Oh, and I bet less than 10% of Linux users know what 'stat' means. Most of 
them would be happy to know "var/lock/console.lock appears in the tape archive 
but not on disk."