Integrity of a tar -archieve

Message

jotte · Post by **jotte** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 12:29 pm

How can I check the integrity of a large tar -archieve (12 GB)?

karnesky · Post by **karnesky** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 3:32 pm

What do you mean by 'check the integrity of?'

You can test the hashes against known hashes, as you could with smaller files--it just takes longer.

jotte · Post by **jotte** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 4:44 pm

I created a tar -archieve of my Gentoo system with following command:

tar cvjpf /mnt/Gentoobackup/stage4.tar.bz2 / -X /home/jotte/stage4.excl

When it was done, I tried to preview it with Archiever to check that the tar -file was OK. After a long while Archiever ended up with a message saying Archiever encountered an error or something like that. Does this mean, that the file is corrupt? Or is the file too big the Archiever to handle it?

karnesky · Post by **karnesky** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 5:04 pm

Never heard of 'Archiever'. You can use 'tar t' to list the file contents, if that is all you were going to do.

BlackEdder · Post by **BlackEdder** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 5:05 pm

You could try
tar tvjf /mnt/Gentoobackup/stage4.tar.bz2
to review the tar file (it will list all files in the tar file).

jotte · Post by **jotte** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 7:32 pm

Thank you for your kind help BlackEdder. I did as you suggested. Listing of files completed without errors, so the archive -file propably is OK.

Horatio · Post by **Horatio** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 3:23 pm

I've tried the command

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tar --one-file-system -cvWf /home/nathan/POCKET/my_home_today.tar .

in two scenarios. One in KDE with Konsole and the other with my self logged out of KDE with a virtual terminal logged in as root then su to my user.

Both times the tar command

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tar -t  my_home_today.tar .

will give no output for an hour and I will give up. Also the utility Ark gives the error message

An error occurred while tryig to open the archive

I am trying to backup my home directory. My previous problem with tar is http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-55 ... ight-.html.

Genone · Post by **Genone** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 3:36 pm

Horatio wrote:Both times the tar command
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tar -t  my_home_today.tar .
will give no output for an hour and I will give up. Also the utility Ark gives the error message

Of course, because tar is waiting for input. As you didn't specify the -f switch it expects the archive on stdin.

Horatio · Post by **Horatio** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 2:40 am

Wow, serious user error on my part. Much thanks, though I don't know why having used tar I forgot that! *sigh*

Horatio · Post by **Horatio** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 2:44 am

I should add that the graphical tool file-roller worked even though the graphical tool ark gave an error.

Integrity of a tar -archieve

Integrity of a tar -archieve

tar archieve, backup corrupt

Re: tar archieve, backup corrupt