maybe I'm out of the loop on tar, but:

[Chapter11]

I'm having a really odd problem with tar.

I can create a .tar file, initially empty. Later, I add files to it (via -u or -r). The size of the tarfile grows as expected.

The problem is that trying to -t (view contents) or -x (extract) the tarfile returns with no data and no error, as if the tarfile is still an empty tarfile.

Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

(AIX 4.3.3 ml09)

 

[Guest_imported]

just curious - how do you create empty tar file??
check out $file blank.tar - is it a tar file??

 

[Chapter11]

Assuming you're using AIX's tar:

tar -cvf filename.tar

It will create a 10k filename.tar that contains nothing except the tar format header.

GNU's version of tar is cowardly and refuses to create empty tar files.

I solved the problem I was having though, but it did require GNU's tar:

The tarfile I had data in (that was added via -u), was actually silently erroring out. I tried tar -tivf filename.tar, and it reported that there was a header error, but listed the file I expected. I couldn't get it to report on any files in subsequent sections, but gnu's tar will process the entire file, not just the first header or two. I haven't -x'ed the data, but I'm leaving that to the people who are having the problem to begin with =)