Hi, Ralph,
Thanks for helping to figure out where the problem is. You wrote:
> > This report is for tar-1.29, compiled and installed on Mac El Capitan.
> > When the environment variable "LANG" is not set, tar cannot handle a
> > compressed archive--the error is "broken pipe". For example:
> >
> > m3rgma0371carn - T tar tvzf archive.tgz
> > gnutar: Child died with signal 11
> > gnutar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
> > m3rgma0371carn - T $ export LANG=" "
> > m3rgma0371carn - T $ tar tvzf archive.tgz
> > drwxr-xr-x gross/staff 0 2016-08-29 12:10 hsperfdata_gross/
> > drwx------ gross/staff 0 2016-08-13 [...]
> >
> > There is no problem if I gunzip the archive first, and then run tar.
>
> Setting LANG to a space doesn't tell us what it and other locale
> environment variables were set to, if they were set, before then. Can
> we have the output of these commands when tar fails.
> locale
> env | egrep '^(LANG|LC_)' | cat -et
m3rgma0371carn - T $ unset LANG
m3rgma0371carn - T $ gnutar -tvf archive.tgz
gnutar: Child died with signal 11
gnutar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
m3rgma0371carn - T $ locale
LANG=
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_CTYPE="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_ALL=
m3rgma0371carn - T $ env | egrep '^(LANG|LC_)' | cat -et
m3rgma0371carn - T $
> BTW, I assume setting LANG to space isn't particularly valid. If
> you want to reset your locale to the old simple one, do `export
> LC_ALL=C'.
That was part of the point. LANG did not need to be set to a valid
locale in order to get tar to work. But it apparently needed to be
set to something. For whatever reason, my login was not setting LANG
or LC_ALL, and that made gnutar unhappy.
Thanks. I'm happy to provide more information if that helps track
down the bug.--Rob
--
Rob Gross (617) 552-3758
Department of Mathematics http://fmwww.bc.edu/gross/
Boston College gr...@bc.edu
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467-3806
