Issued:
2015-07-22
Updated:
2015-07-22

RHBA-2015:1285 - tar bug fix update

Synopsis

tar bug fix update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated tar packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Description

The GNU tar program can save multiple files in one archive and restore the files from that archive.

This update fixes the following bugs:

  • Previously, when the "--verify" or "-W" option was used, the tar utility always exited with a status of 2, and false warning messagess per each archived file were printed. This behavior was a regression introduced in tar-1.23-11.el6. With this update, tar exits with a status of 2 only if there is a real problem with the archived files. (BZ#923359)

  • Prior to this update, tar interpreted an argument containing an unescaped "[" character and no corresponding "]" character as a pattern-matching string instead of an archive member name, unless the "--no-wildcard" option was used. Consequently, if a user wanted to extract an existing archive member with a path name containing the argument, tar failed to match the argument with the corresponding member, printed an error message, and eventually exited with a non-zero exit status. This problem has been fixed, and tar is now able to extract such a file. (BZ#1034360)

  • Previously, tar did not automatically detect archives compressed by the xz program if the user did not specify the "-J" or "--xz" option on the command line. As a consequence, if the processed archive had the ".xz" extension, tar extracted or listed the contents of the archive but printed an error message and eventually exited with a non-zero exit status. If the archive did not have this extension, tar failed. With this update, the automatic recognition mechanism has been improved. As a result, tar no longer prints an error message in this scenario, and it extracts or lists the contents of such archives correctly regardless of the extension. (BZ#1056672)

  • The tar(1) man page does not list all the available options; however, it now mentions the fact that complete information on using tar is available in the tar Info page, which can be displayed by running the "info tar" command. (BZ#1119312)

Users of tar are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata relevant to your system have been applied.

For details on how to apply this update, refer to:

https://access.redhat.com/articles/11258

Affected Products

ProductVersionArch
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian6ppc64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems6s390x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension (for IBM z Systems)6s390x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems)6s390x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop6i386

Updated Packages

  • tar-debuginfo-1.23-13.el6.ppc64.rpm
  • tar-1.23-13.el6.i686.rpm
  • tar-1.23-13.el6.x86_64.rpm
  • tar-debuginfo-1.23-13.el6.x86_64.rpm
  • tar-1.23-13.el6.src.rpm
  • tar-1.23-13.el6.ppc64.rpm
  • tar-debuginfo-1.23-13.el6.s390x.rpm
  • tar-debuginfo-1.23-13.el6.i686.rpm
  • tar-1.23-13.el6.s390x.rpm

Fixes

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information