Question

Solaris 10.

I am trying to test a fix to a purchased application. Previously the application did not correctly handle the error from tar when an input file was > 8 GB. The application has been patched to use the E option for tar, so it will no longer get this error. That piece is easy to test.

However, I also want to test that the application will correctly process an error when tar returns one. Since I can’t use the file > 8 GB, I am now looking for another way to get tar to throw an error.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Jim

Answer 1

How about:

% echo wibble >t.tar
% tar tvf t.tar
tar: Unrecognized archive format: Inappropriate file type or format
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors.
% echo $?
1
% 

…or is that too obvious, or perhaps the wrong sort of error?

Or here’s an error produced when creating a tarball (edited following OP’s comment):

% mkdir foo
% chmod 0 foo
% ls -ld foo
d---------  2 norman  wheel  68 10 Jul 18:13 foo/
% tar cf foo.tar foo
tar: foo: Couldn't visit directory: Permission denied
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors.
% echo $?
1
%