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Re: tar hangs on unpacking calcoo_1.3.16.orig.tar


Reinier Post wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 09:56:08AM +0100, Corinna Vinschen wrote:

>>> No, it shouldn't.  We are not going to patch every conceivable
>>> program to understand MS-DOS special files.
> 
> I am not asking for tar to deal with a special file,
> but with a C source code file that happens to be named aux.c.

  That is just what the phrase "MS-DOS special files" refers to: *any* file of
any kind that has 'aux', 'con', 'prn', etc. as the base part of the filename.

> I'm not even asking for it to write that file, merely not to go
> into an infinite loop.  I know tar can easily hang on certain input
> (e.g. /dev/zero) but I think this particular behavior is not something
> users can be expected to work around preventively - a bug.

> Can't this be handled at the system call level?
> After all it's not the tar source code but unlink()'s return code
> that seems to cause the problem.

  It's certainly a bug that unlink() returns 0 on a file that doesn't exist,
instead of indicating ENOENT.  However 1.5 series is dead, there aren't going
to be any further updates to it.  You can always get the sources and patch
yourself a custom DLL, if for some reason upgrading to 1.7 isn't an option for
you, but that's about the limit of your options I'm afraid.

    cheers,
      DaveK


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