Hi, Tar checks the file's ctime before and after archiving it, and fails if it not the same. However, under Linux, in some special circumstances ctime of a file changes when the kernel syncs that file to the disk, despite that its contents or meta-data is not modified by any processes.
Please read this mail I posted to the linux kernel mailing list yesterday for a detailed discussion. (No answer yet, but it may change; you might even want to join this thread.) http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=118599089926466 I don't know if the kernel's behavior is okay or it is a kernel bug. Anyway, I suggest that tar could probably watch for mtime instead of ctime. It seems to me more logical since I guess tar tries to protect against archiving inconsistent files, which means that we should protect against changing content, and not changing meta-info during archiving. thanks, Egmont
