tar and gtar fail: Archive contains obsolescent base-64 headers
 

Tar and gtar are failing with the same error.

I am taking files from a 32 bit server, rsyncing them to a 64 bit server, and then running "tar cvzf filename" on them. That tar is seemingly created with no problems. However, when I try to extract the tar file, I get the following error.

"tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Archive contains obsolescent base-64 headers

gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--format violated
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors"

The results are the same using gtar and tar. Also, It does not matter if the tar extraction is run on a 32 bit or 64 bit machine. It the tar/zip was created on the 64 bit server, it will still fail.

If I do not include the zip option when creating, I am able to extract without error.

However, the create and extract tar with zip option works fine on a 32 bit server. Also, I can create the tar on a 32 bit server and extract on a 64 bit server. This leaves a short list of possibilities. The 64 bit server cannot successfully tar and zip these files although it appears to complete with no problems.

The files I am trying to tar are a set of files generated by svn hotcopy on a 32 bit machine.

Any help would be appreciated

32 bit server is CentOS 4.4
64 bit server is CentOS 5

Thanks,
Dan

Thats very strange, if I can I will test on my set up later and let you know how I get on, I would be going from Fedora 7 32bit to RHEL 5.1 64bit - please can you post your rsync syntax so I can do a fair test.

I have on another not done something much like this in the past few days but I used scp to move the data around and had no problems.

Thanks for your interest. My rsync statement is below. It is run as part of a script call from cron.

rsync -acv -e "ssh -i /root/cron/thisserver-rsync-key -p 2020" $base_dir/$svn_db/* root@192.168.0.106:/data/svn/svn_tmp/

I have authroiztion keys set up for the script but it does not matter if I run the rsync by script or manually. The results of the failed tar with zip option remain consistent.

Thanks,
Dan

Hi Dan, Sorry but the DB developers have now grabbed my 64bit server so I can't test for you at the moment :( Will do my best to get it back asap. Can I recommend you try scp for the file copy just to see if you have the same issue, it may narrow things down for us just as a test.

I used scp instead of rsync and received only slightly different results. The extraction process went significantly farther before it failed.

scp command:

scp -r -P 2020 ./* root@192.168.0.18:/tmp/test/


tar with zip command:

tar cvzf tarZipScp_liberty.tar.gz ./*


tar extract with unzip option:

tar xvzf tarZipScp_liberty.tar.gz

results (truncated):
./db/revprops/2017
./db/revprops/1001
./db/revprops/1810
./db/revprops/465
./db/revprops/154
./db/revprops/559
./db/revprops/821
./db/revprops/1454
./db/revprops/42
./db/revprops/878

gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--crc error
./db/revprops/729
./db/revprops/1201
./db/revprops/2802
./db/revprops/400
./db/revprops/1114
./db/revprops/998
./db/revprops/2330
./db/revprops/3088
./db/revprops/2798
./db/revprops/2961
./db/revprops/13
./db/revprops/1796
./db/revprops/1592
./db/revprops/1862
./db/revprops/3673
./db/revprops/2612
./db/revprops/3593
./db/revprops/69
./db/revprops/2885
./db/revprops/2734
./db/revprops/1695
./db/revprops/2311
./db/revprops/1684
./db/revprops/2276
./db/revprops/1320
./db/revprops/2892
./db/revprops/2024
./db/revprops/2173
./db/uuid
./db/fs-type
./format
./hooks/
./hooks/post-commit.tmpl
./hooks/start-commit.tmpl
./hooks/pre-lock.tmpl
./hooks/post-revprop-change.tmpl
./hooks/pre-unlock.tmpl
./hooks/post-unlock.tmpl
./hooks/pre-commit.tmpl
./hooks/post-lock.tmpl
./hooks/pre-revprop-change.tmpl
./locks/
./locks/db-logs.lock
./locks/db.lock
./README.txt
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors


gzip test and list:

[root@liberty try_again]# gzip -tv tarZipScp_liberty.tar.gz
tarZipScp_liberty.tar.gz:
gzip: tarZipScp_liberty.tar.gz: invalid compressed data--crc error
[root@liberty try_again]# gzip -lv tarZipScp_liberty.tar.gz
method crc date time compressed uncompressed ratio uncompressed_name
defla 4dab6bc4 Mar 12 10:56 5971532591 2073176064 -188.0% tarZipScp_liberty.tar