RHBA-2005:380 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated tar package that fixes various bugs is now available.

Description

The GNU tar program saves many files together in one archive and can
restore individual files (or all of the files) from that archive.

The following issues have been addressed:

• The tar utility did not extract sparse files properly when sending output

somewhere other than a plain file, e.g., to /dev/null, or to a pipe. This
was due to tar attempting to perform operations such as seek and ftruncate
that do not work on non-files.

• The tar utility incorrectly handled files with long names. This error

occured with file names of 100 or more bytes.

• The tar utility produced incorrect (higher) total estimates it archived

sparse files to /dev/null.

Users of tar should upgrade to this updated package, which resolves these
issues.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-released
errata relevant to your system have been applied. Use Red Hat
Network to download and update your packages. To launch the Red Hat
Update Agent, use the following command:

up2date

For information on how to install packages manually, refer to the
following Web page for the System Administration or Customization
guide specific to your system:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 4 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 154882 - tar 1.14 doesn't extract sparse files correctly, breaking amanda

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)