7.212. tar

Bug Fixes

BZ#923359

Previously, when the "--verify" or "-W" option was used, the tar utility always exited with a status of 2, and false warning messagess per each archived file were printed. This behavior was a regression introduced in tar-1.23-11.el6. With this update, tar exits with a status of 2 only if there is a real problem with the archived files.

BZ#1034360

Prior to this update, tar interpreted an argument containing an unescaped "[" character and no corresponding "]" character as a pattern-matching string instead of an archive member name, unless the "--no-wildcard" option was used. Consequently, if a user wanted to extract an existing archive member with a path name containing the argument, tar failed to match the argument with the corresponding member, printed an error message, and eventually exited with a non-zero exit status. This problem has been fixed, and tar is now able to extract such a file.

BZ#1056672

Previously, tar did not automatically detect archives compressed by the xz program if the user did not specify the "-J" or "--xz" option on the command line. As a consequence, if the processed archive had the ".xz" extension, tar extracted or listed the contents of the archive but printed an error message and eventually exited with a non-zero exit status. If the archive did not have this extension, tar failed. With this update, the automatic recognition mechanism has been improved. As a result, tar no longer prints an error message in this scenario, and it extracts or lists the contents of such archives correctly regardless of the extension.

BZ#1119312

The tar(1) man page does not list all the available options; however, it now mentions the fact that complete information on using tar is available in the tar Info page, which can be displayed by running the "info tar" command.