Description of problem: tar's ability to handle lzma-compressed archives depends on the xz-lzma-compat package which is not installed by default. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): tar-1.26-2.fc16.x86_64 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1.compress tar ball with lzma 2.run 'tar atf compressed-tar-ball.tar.lzma' 3. Actual results: $ tar atf compressed-tar-ball.tar.lzma tar (child): lzma: Cannot exec: No such file or directory tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now tar: Child returned status 2 Expected results: No error, tarball handled. Additional info: Either: 1. Add xz-lzma-compat as a runtime dependency to tar or 2. Change tar to use lzcat instead of lzma. The former comes with the xz package.
Little typo: for solution two, use xzcat, not lzcat.
Thanks for suggestions. I don't like hard runtime dependency idea - as it would mean adding runtime dependency for all the other external compression programs supported by tar. Second option, changing LZMA_PROGRAM to something from xz package probably makes sense - probably to xz --format=lzma , which will cover that.
I looked at this a little. This could be easily done if there was possibility to pass to tar compress command consisting of multiple arguments. And so far there is only possibility to pass single worded command. Relevant upstream discussion: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2012-08/msg00001.html There is possible to ship with GNU tar some wrapper around 'xz --format=lzma' residing in PATH (which is ugly) or hack tar to support multi worded commands. Pavel
Taking.
Upstream proposal: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2013-01/msg00016.html
Upstream added support for this by the commit: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/tar.git/commit/?id=7b5e803963822e69a73d00ba62ac01b1c23f112c I have added this quite big patch into fedora Rawhide. This is not a so big issue for fedora <= fc20 thus closing as RAWHIDE. Pavel