Re: Found a bug in tar-header at "ustar" magic indicator field

[Joerg Schilling]

Juha Mäkinen <juhmakin@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I looked at the contents of the tar-file in hex editor.
> What I noticed is that the tar header is formed incorrectly. It's supposed to
> contain the "ustar" TMAGIC indicator at offset 257 followed by a null.  But, 
> what
> I get is "ustar" followed by a space (0x20).  Then at offset 263, it's
> supposed to be the TVERSION version "00", but I am seeing a space (0x20) and 
> then a
> null (0x00).
>
> Tar creates this kind of header:
> 0000400  \0   u   s   t   a   r          \0   m   a   k   i   n   e   n
>
> The correct form should be:
> 0000400  \0   u   s   t   a   r  \0   0   0   \0   m   a   k   i   n   e   n

GNU tar is not POSIX by default and changing this would cause other tar 
implementations to become unable to adopt to the incompatiblities in the 
archive format created by GNU tar.

Jörg

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