Issued:

2012-06-20

Updated:

2012-06-20

RHBA-2012:0849 - tar bug fix and enhancement update

Synopsis

tar bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory (none)

Topic

Updated tar packages that fix several bugs and add one enhancement are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The GNU tar program can save multiple files in one archive and restore the files from that archive.

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Before this update, tar could terminate with a segmentation fault and returned code 139. This happened when tar was used for incremental backup of the root directory with the option "--listed-incremental" (short option "-g") due to incorrect directory name resolution. The root directory name is now resolved correctly and the backup process succeeds in this scenario. (BZ#653433)

• The tar utility archived sparse files with long names (about 100 characters) incorrectly if run with the "--posix" and "--sparse" options (PAX mode). Such files were stored with misleading names inside the tar archive as there was not enough space allocated for the file names. Subsequent unpacking of the package resulted in confusing output file names. With this update, more space is now allocated for the file names in this scenario and the problem no longer occurs. (BZ#656834)

• If tar was run with the "--remove-files" option and the archived directory contained a file and a symbolic link pointing to the file, the file was deleted but not backed up. The archiving process terminated with an error. With this update, the file is archived as expected in this scenario. (BZ#698212)

• The tar unpacking process could enter an infinite loop and consume extensive CPU resources when run with the "--keep-old-files" option. This happened when unpacking an archive with symbolic links and the target of the symbolic link already existed. With this update, the code has been modified to handle symbolic links correctly in this scenario. (BZ#726723)

• The tar tool used the glibc fnmatch() function to match file names. However, the function failed to match a file name when the archived file name contained characters not supported by the default locale. Consequently, the file was not unpacked. With this update, tar uses the gnulib fnmatch() and the file name is matched as expected. (BZ#768724)

• If tar was run with the "--remove-files" option, it failed to remove the archived files when append mode was activated (the -r option). With this update, tar with the "--remove-files" option now calls the function that removes the files after they have been archived and the option works as expected. (BZ#782628)

• The tar tool failed to update the target archive when run with the "--update" and "--directory" options, returned the "Cannot stat: No such file or directory" error message, and the directory content was not archived. With this update, the tar command with the two options now works as expected. (BZ#688567)

• When extracting an archive with the "--keep-old-files" option, tar silently skipped already existing files. With this update, tar returns error code 2 and a warning in this scenario. Also, the "--skip-old-files" option has been added to allow the previous "--keep-old-files" behavior without returning errors for files that already exist. (BZ#799252)

• When run with the "--list" (-r) option, tar returned the "tar: write error" message, even though the execution succeeded. This happened if the command used redirection with a pipeline and the command following the redirection failed to process the entire tar command output. With this update, the spurious message is no longer returned in this scenario. (BZ#807728)

In addition, this update adds this enhancement:

• When archiving a sparse file containing 0 blocks of data, the archiving process experienced severe performance issues because tar was scanning the sparse file for non-existing data. With this update, a sparse file containing 0 blocks is detected by the stat() call and the archiving process is now faster for such files. (BZ#760665)

All tar users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs and add this enhancement.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously-released errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via the Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/articles/11258

Affected Products

Updated Packages

• tar-debuginfo-1.23-7.el6.ppc64.rpm
• tar-debuginfo-1.23-7.el6.s390x.rpm
• tar-1.23-7.el6.src.rpm
• tar-1.23-7.el6.x86_64.rpm
• tar-1.23-7.el6.ppc64.rpm
• tar-1.23-7.el6.s390x.rpm
• tar-1.23-7.el6.i686.rpm
• tar-debuginfo-1.23-7.el6.i686.rpm
• tar-debuginfo-1.23-7.el6.x86_64.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 653433
• This content is not included.BZ - 656834
• This content is not included.BZ - 687972
• This content is not included.BZ - 688567
• This content is not included.BZ - 698212
• This content is not included.BZ - 726723
• This content is not included.BZ - 768724
• This content is not included.BZ - 782628
• This content is not included.BZ - 799252

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information

• The Red Hat security contact is This content is not included.secalert@redhat.com. More contact details at https://access.redhat.com/security/team/contact/.
• Offline Security Data data is available for integration with other systems. See Offline Security Data API to get started.