Description of problem: The GNU tar update to 1.15.91 a few days ago has broken my amanda backup system due to a switch to a different state file format. Specifically, from analysis of /var/log/amanda/ the problem is when sending sizes of level 1s (or above): sendsize[9076]: time 0.799: /bin/tar: Unexpected field value in snapshot file sendsize[9076]: time 0.799: /bin/tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now sendsize[9076]: time 0.800: ..... sendsize[9076]: estimate time for /home level 1: 0.004 sendsize[9076]: no size line match in /bin/tar output for "/home" From some searching, this is a known issue and caused the amanda people to issue 2.5.1 incorporating some sort of change to work around it: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amanda-hackers/message/5149 However the real problem is in tar - it should not casually introduce a new file format breaking existing incremental dump state files. Either way, amanda backups using tar are non-functional on FC5 after this update. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 1.15.91 How reproducible: Requires incremental backup state files generated with an older tar.
I have pushed new tar-1.15.91 update, because incremental backup in tar-1.15.90 didn't work properly (#206121). tar-1.15.91 was also pushed into RHEL-5 and FC-6, so we really need to solve this problem fast. Backporting the newer gnutar support from 2.5.1 to 2.5.0p2 seems to be best way. If it's not possible, we can either downgrade tar to version 1.15.1, which includes backporting some patches or start talking about amanda upgarade.
Ok, so I'm almost finished with the port. However from the documentation it seems like incremental backups doesn't work with POSIX format archives (in this version). The state file format is the only problem for amanda? If so I'll look at patching that change into 1.15.91.
Well, there's the fact that the --one-file-system option doesn't work, which means that when I try to back up / it dumps /proc, /selinux, /home, etc. It really should be opened as a separate bug, though.
tar-1.15.91 with fixed one file system option is available here: people.redhat.com/pvrabec/rpms/tar-1.15.91-3.src.rpm
This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux release. Product Management has requested further review of this request by Red Hat Engineering. This request is not yet committed for inclusion in release.
QE ack to resolving the situation in some manner. Either we sort out what's broken with tar or we revert tar. We simply can't be in the position that amanda doesn't work.
Using tar-1.15.91-3 with both the --listed-incremental option and the --wildcards option appears to be busted in that the output file contains no directory information. I think that this is a good datapoint that 1.15.91 is not usable.
fixed by tar-1.15.1-18
Putting into the correct state (modified) Will move to Verified once the fix is verified and then to Closed once the fixed package appears in a RHEL5 tree.