Re: [Bug-tar] ACL support in git version of GNU tar

[Markus Steinborn]

Joerg Schilling schrieb:
> Markus Steinborn <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > Hi everybody,
> >
> > Today I noticed that GNU tar (git master) now supports XATTRs, ACLs and
> > SELINUX-Attributes. I am really pleased to read this in "git log".
> > Congratualtions for this improvement. The improvements do not break star
> > und redhat tar compatibility.
> >
> > Having used Redhats patch for many years now (and an improved version
> > which I made), I am able to enumerate a few points that IMHO need
> > improvement:
> >
> >
> > (1) tar archive creation with "--numeric-owner" option:
> >
> > In this case, users are expectiing that the archive does not contain any
> > symbolic owner name, so it can be extracted to an emoty hard disc on a
> > system bootet e. g. by a rescue cd from Redhat. Current sitation is that
> > ACLs still include the symbolic owner and not the numeric owner.
[...}
> > I'd like to note that this improvement is essential to me.
> Why?
>
> Star introduced the -numeric option in 1993 to work in create list and extract
> mode. The ACL Support introduced in 2001 was created to behave in a similar way.
>
> If gtar does the same, the best way would be to use -numeric in extract mode.
Assume you've created an archive with that option. You want to restore 
it to a new hard disc drive. All you have available are redhat rescue 
cd's (from today, not from future). Their tar will do it correctly iff 
the archives are created with the owner-field being numeric.

So users could benefit from that proposed change. And it costs so less.


Greetings

Markus Steinborn