topic Tar -tvf command causes system hang in Operating System - Linux

Tar -tvf command causes system hang

Andrew Kaplan — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 09:02:58 GMT

Hi there --

I have Fedora Core 5 installed on a system, and whenever I run the tar -tvf command on a locally attached tape drive, the system hangs. I am then forced to reboot the server. The problem does not occur when I run tar -cvf or tar -xvf.

The operating system was upgraded from Fedora Core 4 to 5 and is also hardened by Bastille Linux. The version of tar is 1.15.1. Has anyone seen this problem before? Thanks.

Re: Tar -tvf command causes system hang

Karsten Breivik_1 — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 06:13:34 GMT

Have not seen this before. Have seen problems with tar packing files with long filenames on Solaris, but not on Linux. Anyway it could be wort a check to see if there is something with your source files making tar hang - maybe moving a small number of files that you know well to see wether the problem lies within tar or within dirvers or device...

Anyway I see tar is at 1.16 so maybe an upgrade could help...

Re: Tar -tvf command causes system hang

Andrew Kaplan — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 14:21:48 GMT

Hi there --

I upgraded tar to version 1.16 and unfortunately, the problem continues to exist.