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From: vancleef@iastate.edu (Van Cleef Henry H)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.3b1
Subject: Re: TAR on 3b1
Keywords: tar
Message-ID: <1991Jun28.220436.29284@news.iastate.edu>
Date: 28 Jun 91 22:04:36 GMT
References: <136@morwyn.UUCP> <57141@rphroy.UUCP> <1991Jun28.120929.24594@sco.COM>
Sender: news@news.iastate.edu (USENET News System)
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Lines: 26

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 -
>> |> 
>
>> 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)

I have seen this problem with files tarred and compressed on a
DECstation under Ultrix 4.1.  The pipe hangs.  Solution is to
uncompress the file first, then untar it.  Finding a real fix is 
one more round-tuit project.
-- 
Hank van Cleef  
vancleef@iastate.edu	Iowa State University, Ames. Ia.
tmn!vancleef		The Union Institute, Cincinnati, Oh.