Bug 33894

Summary:	tar -T option with --gzip backs up files more than once and/or documentation incorrect.
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Need Real Name <ajahn>
Component:	tar	Assignee:	Bernhard Rosenkraenzer <bero>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:	David Lawrence <dkl>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	6.2
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i686
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2001-03-29 16:20:49 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Need Real Name 2001-03-29 16:20:45 UTC

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 95)


When using tar (GNU tar) version 1.13.17 with option -T <include-file> tar 
backs up more than the files specified in this file. 

For example:

If the directory /home/myacct/.netscape is specified in the -T file, 
tar backs up the entire directory rather than JUST the directory.
This ends up tarring more files than were specified in the -T file.

When the --gzip option is used, the problem appears to be more pronounced 
and seems to loop on large files backing them up multiple times.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. echo "/home/myaccount/.netscape" > my.list
2. tar -cvPf my.tar -T my.list 
3. # You will notice that this not only backs up /home/myacct/.netscape, 
but also /home/myacct/.netscape/cache, etc.

I can reproduce the --gzip problem but the results vary from run to run. 
The -T file contains ! 9,000 fileIDs.

Actual Results:  tar dumped the /home/myacct/.netscape/cache/* directory 
and all it's contents including all the other directories and files 
under /home/myacct/.netscape.

It doesn't appear to do this with the other directory entries in the -T 
file.

Expected Results:  I expected the -T option to take the files listed in 
my.list and only back them up. 

It should have backed up the directory name: /home/myacct/.netscape
and nothing else.


The documentation says the file specified by -T contains the files that 
are to be created. 

Perhaps the documentation should state that entire directories get backed 
up.

This may not be as much of a bug as I first thought. But the --gzip option 
did cause freaky results which varied as I tried to re-create it.

Comment 1 Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2001-05-22 20:10:44 UTC

The first part is intentional --

echo "/home/user/.netscape" >list
tar cf foo.tar -T list

does the same as

tar cf foo.tar /home/user/.netscape

and is supposed to do just that.

I can't reproduce the 2nd part on a 7.1 system.