Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 209437
GNU tar update to 1.15.1-15.FC5 breaks existing amanda installations
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:11:45 EST
Description of problem: I was the original reporter of bug 206979. This was converted to an RHEL bug which I don't have perms to change, and 207115 was cloned from it for FC5, which I didn't create and so I can't reopen. Hence this new bug which is just a continuation as the problem is not resolved. It may also apply to RHEL5. The update to tar-1.15.1-15.FC5 has not fixed matters, just changed them. The following was recorded in my amanda run: /-- dargo /usr lev 4 FAILED [/bin/tar returned 2] sendbackup: start [dargo:/usr level 4] sendbackup: info BACKUP=/bin/tar sendbackup: info RECOVER_CMD=/bin/tar -f... - sendbackup: info end ? gtar: /var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists/dargo_usr_4.new:1: Invalid time stamp | Total bytes written: 1307985920 (1.3GiB, 2.3MiB/s) ? gtar: Error exit delayed from previous errors sendbackup: error [/bin/tar returned 2] \-------- Taking /boot as a simpler example, analysis of the amanda logs showed that amanda caused this with this (not very special for amanda) invocation: /bin/tar --create --file /dev/null --directory /boot --one-file-system --listed-incremental /var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists/dargo_boot_1.new --sparse --ignore-failed-read --totals --exclude-from /var/log/amanda/sendsize._boot.20061005020036000.exclude . /var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists/dargo_boot_1.new starts off as a copy of the existing incremental backup, so I can reproduce this problem by first doing: cp /var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists/dargo_boot_1 /var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists/dargo_boot_1.new and then the above tar command which indeed gives the error output. This is the entirety of /var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists/dargo_boot_1: GNU tar-1.15.90-1 1159839407 953396000 1149277979 0 2304 11 ./lost+found 1158383967 0 2304 8033 ./grub 1158383967 0 2304 8033 ./grub/ 1158383965 0 2304 2 ./ 1149277979 0 2304 11 ./lost+found/ and this is the entirety of /var/lib/amanda/gnutar-lists/dargo_boot_1.new after the above tar command has rewritten it: 1160050480 2304 11 ./lost+found 2304 8033 ./grub So there seems to be another incompatible file format change. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): tar-1.15.1-15.FC5
problem is that each tar release(1.15.1, 1.15.90, 1.15.91) use different state file. Amanda is not adjusted to work with 1.15.91 and incremental backup in 1.15.90 works wrong, therefore we have decided to downgrade tar to 1.15.1. Unfortunately 1.15.1 can't read state files from 1.15.90. This problem doesn't affect RHEL-5, because RHEL-5 is not released, so there aren't any 1.15.90 state files. I suggest to force amanda to do new tar backup of level 0, it should recreate the state files, and then things will work.
OK. I guess you'll have to worry about this for RHEL-6 then :-). I'll force level 0s and get on with life. So I'm marking as WONTFIX. Thanks, Jifl