Re: [Bug-tar] [Q] control symlink creation time in tar archive ?

[Hidehiko Nitta]

Hi,

Thank you very much for detailed answer.
I understood the situation.
Thank you very much also for filing the TODO
items for lutimes/lchmod functions supported platforms.

Best Regards,
 Nitta Hidehiko 
 [Email: address@hidden

 DSP dev. EDA Application group
 Texas Instruments Japan Limited 
 TEL 029-881-4674 (EXT 8-881-4674)

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:05:03 -0800,
    Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hidehiko Nitta <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > I am trying to extract symlinks as symlink with same
> > creation time as original from a tar archive. But, I always
> > get the creation time updated to a time of extraction.
> > Actually, I see a creation time is preserved in tar archive itself.
> >
> > Is there any way to realize this inside gtar or outside gtar
> > after extraction on UNIX (Solaris) ?
> 
> Not on Solaris, no.  You need an operating system with the lutimes
> system call, or something equivalent to that.  Solaris 9 doesn't
> have that.
> 
> FreeBSD does have lutimes, but GNU tar doesn't yet support operating
> systems that have lutimes.  There's a similar problem with the mode
> bits of a symlink, and the lchmod function.  GNU tar doesn't yet
> support that either.  Again, this doesn't matter for Solaris, which
> lacks lchmod, but it does matter for operating systems like FreeBSD.
> 
> While we're on the subject, GNU tar should support restoring file time
> stamps to sub-second resolution at some point.
> 
> I added the following to tar/TODO:
> 
> * Add support for restoring file time stamps to sub-second resolution,
>   if the file system supports this.
> 
> * Add support for restoring the attributes of symbolic links, for
>   OSes like FreeBSD that have the lutimes and lchmod functions.
> 
> 
> > My gnu tar version is below.
> > tar (GNU tar) 1.12
> 
> 1.12 is pretty old these days; I suggest upgrading to 1.14.