Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!spool.mu.edu!marque!introl!booth!roger
From: roger@booth.uucp (Roger Abrahams)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.3b1
Subject: Re: TAR on 3b1
Keywords: tar
Message-ID: <1991Jun29.123603.24140@booth.uucp>
Date: 29 Jun 91 12:36:03 GMT
References: <136@morwyn.UUCP> <57141@rphroy.UUCP> <1991Jun28.120929.24594@sco.COM>
Organization: Private System
Lines: 48

In article <1991Jun28.120929.24594@sco.COM> tom@sco.COM (Tom Kelly) writes:
>In article <136@morwyn.UUCP>, forrie@morwyn.UUCP (Forrie Aldrich) writes
>about problems with
>
>> |> 	zcat file.tar.Z | tar xvf -
>> |> 
>
>In <57141@rphroy.UUCP> tkacik@hobbes.cs.gmr.com (Tom Tkacik CS/50) writes:
>
>> The tar on the 3b1 (like all SYSV tar's) does not make you owner of
>> the files by default.  To do this you must include -o:
>> 
>> 	zcat file.tar.Z | tar xvof -
>> 
>> Do you mean that:
>> 
>> 	uncompress file.tar.Z
>> 	tar xvf file.tar
>> 
>> does work?  The above will not fix it then.  I have never seen this work
>> if the above did not also work.  What error message is tar giving you?
>
>I have seen the behaviour that Forrie has complained about.  There
>is no message from tar, it just hangs.  (This problem is independent
>of the ownership problem, which is solved with -o as Tom said).
>I don't know if the problem is with the pipe, or tar's handling of
>standard input, but I suspect the pipe.  I have largely switched
>to cpio, and find that it works fine with a pipe.
>
>Tom Kelly (scocan!ancill!tom)

It is a well know problem that the "tar" supplied with the Unix-PC will
hang in a pipe IF you are "root" and after attempting to make a directory 
that is missing in the output.  You then must interrupt the tar process and 
re-start it, at which point the directory will be there and tar can put 
the files into it.  It will stop again when it has to make another 
directory that is missing.

Note that this only happens if you are "root" (or have an id of 0) and 
are in a pipe.

This is really strange, as you could make a case for the opposite conditions.

I am also not sure that this is the behavior Forrie describes, as tar will
do something (at least make 1 directory) and, if there were no directories
to make, would appear to work fine.

						- Roger@booth.uucp