[COMPRESS-124] Unable to extract a sparse entries from tar archives

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.1, 1.2
• Fix Version/s: 1.20
• Component/s: Archivers
• Labels: tar

Environment

Platform independent. However, I'm currently using Window 7 Enterprise.

• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Patrick Dreyer
• Created: 15/Dec/10 06:56
• Updated: 28/Jan/20 06:17
• Resolved: 01/Jan/20 17:28

Description

Good news first: I already have the patch ready for that.

I got several TAR files which I could not extract with any of the existing Java implementations, but I could extract all those TAR files successfully with GNU tar.
It turned out that all the failing TAR files contained so called sparse files. Investigating the source code of all existing Java TAR implementations showed me that none of them even recognizes the existence of GNU sparse entries.

Actually, I don't need to process one of the contained sparse files and I'm happy if I'm at least able to correctly untar all the non-sparsed files. Thus, it would be sufficient recognizing sparse files without the need to correctly un-sparse them while extracting. As long as all non-sparsed files get extracted correctly, I'm fine.

The TAR files in question have all been VMware Diagnostic File bundles.
See http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=653 to know how to get them.

Issue Links

• is duplicated by: COMPRESS-476 Is there a plan in commons compress project to support extracting tars contains sparse file?
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #87
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #89

Sub-Tasks

• Detect sparse entries in TARs and allow users to skip over them: Resolved