tar: ././@LongLink creating as regular file

[Sanjiv Sharma_1]

Hi,

I have a got a tar file which when I am extracting then it give me the following messages:
tar: ././@LongLink creating as regular file
tar: ././@LongLink - cannot create
and also
directory checksum error
at the end.

# tar -tvf abc.tar
The output comes without directory checksum error but there are some longlink files in it.
--------- 0/0 103 Jan 1 08:00 1970 ././@LongLink
--------- 0/0 101 Jan 1 08:00 1970 ././@LongLink

What could be the cause of the "directory checksum error" and also what is this "LongLink" and how can I resolve this?

thank you in advance.

[Joseph Loo]

hi,

r u on 11 or 11i? there is actually some reported problem on older patch version of tar command.

reply on tar version:

# what /usr/bin/tar

for 11.00 - PHCO_24633 solve the problem

for 11.11 - PHCO_24716 solve the problem

regards.

[Sanjiv Sharma_1]

Joseph,

My system is on HP-UX 11.11.

what output from my system for tar:
# what /usr/bin/tar
/usr/bin/tar:
tar.c $Date: 2003/05/19 02:55:16 $Revision: r11.11/6 PATCH_11.11 (PHCO_
28992)
$Revision: @(#) all CUP11.11_BL2003_0522_1 PATCH_11.11 PHCO_28992
Thu May 22 03:24:02 PDT 2003 $

PHCO_28992 supersedes PHCO_24716.

[Joseph Loo]

hi sanjiv,

it looks like a corrupt tar file. also, the date for the tvf options seems odd.

do u happen to know what was the option, i.e. besides -cvf, use to tar this?


regards.

[john korterman · Accepted solution]

Hi Sanjiv,

the checksum error is caused by a mismatch between the stored checksum for the archive as a whole and the computed checksum, based on the system's reading of certain fields in the archive. The error would be normal for a non-tar archive, but since you can list some files by a tar command, we must assume that the archive is of type tar.

The odd dates - and file names - could be caused by your system not getting the expected information from some of the fields when it reads the archive.

My guess is therefore that the archive was not created on the machine on which you try to restore it. Another guess is that the archive holds long file names (> 100 chars), which the tar of your system cannot handle. Was the archive produced by GNU tar?

regards from the guessing
John K.

[Peter Nikitka]

Hi,

use option 'i' to ignore directory checksum errors. I found these @Lonklink when restoring tar-files produced by GNUtar or Sequent or ancient SGI IRIX5.3.

mfG Peter

[Stephen Keane]

Would pax be any better?

[Amit Agarwal_1]

I remember seeing this problem, but don't know of fix. However I have suggested a workaround at the end.

The problem happens because HP-UX tar doesn't allow long file names. The limit is around 100 bytes (tho I am not sure of the exact limit). So if you create tar ball on some system other than HP-UX, where long file names are allowed, then you will notice this problem on untar'ing it on HP-UX.

Please note that HP-UX doesn't allow you to create tar ball with long file names. So this problem would never occur if both tar'ing and untar'ing is done on HP-UX.

I couldn't find any patch to fix this problem on 11.11, so only workaround I see is to recreate the tar ball with files having smaller names.

[Sanjiv Sharma_1]

Thanks to all.

I too think that the tar file might have been created on another platform which support LongLinks.

[Sanjiv Sharma_1]

Thread closed.