tar: directory read error

[Robin C. Querol]

I used tar -cvf /dev/rmt/0m .

Here's a snapshot of the error:

tar: ./ARCHIVE/TKTMRG2: directory read error

What does this error mean?

[T G Manikandan]

check the permission of the dir and files beneath that.

directory read error is the error status 5 which means there there was a I/O error.

[S.K. Chan]

It means you don't have permission to access the directory ./ARCHIVE/TKTMRG2 and hence tar complain about it. For example ..( a quick test that I ran .. )
$ cd /users/skchan/data
$ mkdir test
$ chmod 000 test
$ tar cvf dir.tar *
....
....
tar: test: directry read error.

[Radhakrishnan Venkatara]

hi,

check for NFS mounted directory.


radhakrishnan

[Robin C. Querol]

Thanks for the replies. But I have checked the directory permission and its set to 777. The weird part is that prior to the error tar has backuped some files within it. Also the owner of the directory and files is the one executing tar and lastly the user is defined in the sudo file.

[Michael Tully]

How big are the file(s) in question? 'tar' has a limitation of 2Gb on a file.

[Robin C. Querol]

7MB/file

[Michael Tully]

COuld you try and backup the same directory/directories with something other than tar, and to either a new tape or to disk. I want to see if the error occurs using a slightly different method.

Regards
Michael

[Robin C. Querol]

Hi the tar backup of the file system which is around 10GB in size is a daily routine and we just experienced this error today. We tried to run the backup again and see if we still encounter the error. Thanks

[T G Manikandan]

I would suspect the GID/UID of the file.

Try the by performing a tar as the owner of the file.

Thanks