🚀 go-pugleaf

drl@jester.ai.mit.EDU (David R. Linn) writes:

>Has anyone else gotten "tar: impossible file type" messages when trying to
>read the table of contents of prep:/pub/gnu/gcc-solaris-2.3.3.tar.z? 

That problem occurs because GNU tar 1.11.1 creates tar images that
Solaris 2 tar can't read.  Perhaps the people who create gcc-solaris-*.tar
could be talked into using Solaris 2 tar instead (or fixing GNU tar);
that will simplify bootstrapping.

You can work around the problem yourself by using SunOS 4.1.x tar
or GNU tar instead of Solaris 2 tar.  Perhaps the simplest bootstrapping
solution is to use SunOS 4.1.x's tar executable in compatibility mode.

Here are details about the problem.  There is more than one tar format;
let's call them ``traditional'' format and ``ustar'' format.
GNU tar announces that it uses ustar format by putting the appropriate
magic cookie in the tar header.  Solaris 2 tar interprets the cookie to mean,
among other things, that the full st_mode is present, not st_mode & 07777.
But GNU tar outputs the mode in the traditional way, by masking it with 07777.
So Solaris 2 tar complains that the mode is bogus because the higher order bits
are zero.

I don't know what Posix says about this, but clearly something
has to be done to fix this sort of problem if people want to
interchange data between GNU and Solaris 2 hosts.