Re: [Bug-tar] Listed incremental fails with new symbolic link

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

Peter Kronheimer <address@hidden> wrote:

> If an existing non-empty directory is deleted and then replaced by a
> symbolic link (with the same name) pointing to a new target, then the
> listed-incremental mechanism fails, at least with version 1.15.1.

The listed-incremental mechanism is (mainly) based on comparing mtimes
of the files in the previous backup with the mtimes of the existing files,
therefore the proposed testcase is destined to fail at about 50% of
runs. Tar will be able to catch the following change:

rm -r testbackup/bar
mkdir bar-target
ln -s $HOME/tmp/bar-target testbackup/bar

only if enough time has elapsed between  rm and ln for the mtime of
testbackup to change. So, its a toss-up depending on the underlying
filesystem timestamp resolution.

On my box, 100 runs of the supplied script produced 54 failures and
46 successes.  Inserting a `sleep 1' between `rm' and `mkdir' makes the
testcase produce 100% of successes.

Regards,
Sergey