topic Re: Tar exit codes in Operating System - HP-UX

Tar exit codes

Mac_minator — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:59:16 GMT

Can someone give me the list of tar exit codes?
This is for standard /bin/tar.

Re: Tar exit codes

James R. Ferguson — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:03:35 GMT

Hi:

You can probably rely on 0=success; 1=failure in keeping with all standard Unix utilities. Otherwise, 'tar' reports errors with messages.

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Tar exit codes

Steven Schweda — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:53:53 GMT

> This is for standard /bin/tar.

Too bad. The documentation for GNU "tar"
seems to be better along this axis.

http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/
http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/tar_33.html#IDX28

Re: Tar exit codes

Dennis Handly — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:15:56 GMT

>JRF: You can probably rely on 0=success; 1=failure in keeping with all standard Unix utilities.

Don't you mean >0 or non-zero is failure? That's what rm(1) and mkdir(1) say.

Re: Tar exit codes

whiteknight — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:43:33 GMT

Hi Mac,

You should concentrate on the error message accompanying the non-zero exit code

WK

Re: Tar exit codes

William Donnelly — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:23:53 GMT

On my HP system, tar exits with a variety of exit codes (right now, I'm getting an exit code of "5"). I think what folks are asking for is an explanation of what each error code means, specifically. The tar command might be buried inside a massive build script or something, where the actual output is not readily available.

Re: Tar exit codes

Dennis Handly — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:40:55 GMT

>William: tar exits with a variety of exit codes (right now, I'm getting an exit code of 5). I think what folks are asking for is an explanation of what each error code means

Since they aren't documented, you can't attach any meaning to the different exit status.
(You didn't see this but from the source 5 means only non-fatal errors occurred.)