[clue-tech] recovery from tar error

[Jason S. Friedman]

I backup critical files into a bzipped tarball, such as
/var/backups/server/20.home.tar.bz2, usually amounting to
250MB.  I generally have been able to retrieve any old
file successfully.  Today, after
$ tar xjf /var/backups/server/20.home.tar.bz2
tar: home/jason/mail/received/2003-03: Wrote only 4608 of
10240 bytes
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Archive contains obsolescent base-64 headers
tar: home/jason/mail/received/2003-05: Wrote only 0 of
10240 bytes
tar: Skipping to next header
...
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: home/jason/.ssh/id_rsa: Wrote only 0 of 10240 bytes
tar: home/jason/misc/nda: Wrote only 0 of 10240 bytes
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

The bulk of my files are retrievable, but not all.  A
fluke, or something I should be worried about?