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Bug 10641

Summary:	tar doesn't untar through symlinks, it overwrites them
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	pebal
Component:	tar	Assignee:	Bernhard Rosenkraenzer <bero>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	6.2	CC:	bruno
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2000-06-23 12:18:19 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 pebal 2000-04-07 17:16:09 UTC

tar currently doesn't seem to be following symlinks when extracting, but
overwriting them. For example:
cd /usr/src
mkdir temp
ln -s temp linux
tar xzf linux-2.3.99-pre3.tar.gz

...and you end up with linux as a real directory, instead of the files
being put in temp.

Am I on crack? - tested on a NetBSD box and this worked as expected.
- Andy

Comment 1 Tim Waugh 2000-04-14 14:24:59 UTC

I think the rationale is this:

If a file in a tar file is a symbolic link, it will be extracted as a symbolic
link.  Otherwise, it won't. ;-)

Comment 2 Bzizou 2000-04-28 10:23:59 UTC

I confirm.
If a file into a tar is in a directory, and that directory on the system is a
symlink, tar overwrites the link and changes it into a directory when you
extract the file. Tested on a RH 5.2, it doesn't do that and follows well the
symlink. It's probably a bug of gnu tar 1.13.17.

Comment 3 Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2000-06-23 12:18:17 UTC

I suspect it's a posix compliacne fix actually... I'll check.

Comment 4 Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2000-08-04 13:02:05 UTC

Yes, it's a POSIX feature, not a bug.