[clue-tech] recovery from tar error

[Keith Hellman]

On Fri, May 27, 2005 at 05:11:14AM -0600, Jason S. Friedman wrote:
> 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?
 
Are these backed up automatically?  If they are and the archives created
on the surrounding days are OK, then you may have a fluke or the initial
signs of disk isssues.

Are you using a different tar program for creation and extraction?

Sounds strange though -- if I relied on these backups for my livlihood,
I would try to get to the bottum of it.

-- 
Keith Hellman                             #include <disclaimer.h>
khellman at mcprogramming.com                from disclaimer import standard
public key @ www.mcprogramming.com


"While it might seem that a simple increment operator is an atomic
operation, there's no gaurantee that it is.  It's actually possible for
Thread 1 to update half of a 32-bit x while Thread 2 reads the full 32
bits, getting a mishmash instead of a valid integer.  (And that's only
one thing that can go wrong.  Another is that compiler optimization might
leave the integer in a register.  You really can't ever let threads
simultaneously access data without protection.)"

-- Marc J. Rochkind, *Advanced Unix Programming*, Second Ed.
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