Stupid Solaris tricks #1.243e+11.

[reddragdiva]

If you tar a Solaris 9 CD with GNU tar 1.13.25 (written 2001) and scp it to a Solaris 7 box, tar on the receiving box will do tar tvf just fine but claim directory checksum errors when you try to tar xvf. In different places each time. I'm now trying again making the tar file on another Solaris 7 box.

(I am trying to get the CD image to machines that are at the colo and on the other side of the firewall, so as not to have to go out in person. Told you it was stupid.)

Update: The CD appears to present a subtly different directory structure to Red Hat (which presumably looks at Joliet first) and Solaris 7 (which only does Rock Ridge). How clever.

Comments

[aidan-skinner.livejournal.com]

just dd the fucker. ;)

[reddragdiva]

I was tempted, but wasn't sure about Solaris 7 and the .iso mounting trick.

[simonb.livejournal.com]

Well, given that GNU tar has a different take on what the tar standard is to the Solaris one, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

However I have to wonder why you don't just get the CD ISO images from Sun themselves to copy it across.

[reddragdiva]

See above re: ISO-mounting trick. Can Solaris 7 actually do this?

[simonb.livejournal.com]

On Solaris 9 you can use lofi to do it. On previous versions of Solaris you have to use Jörg Schilling's fbk kernel driver instead which is available in standard Solaris package format for all versions of Solaris between 2.5.1 and 8.

[pir.livejournal.com]

Solaris 8 has lofiadm, I use it all the time...

[simonb.livejournal.com]

Damnit! I knew I should've checked first!

[barbedwirekiss.livejournal.com]

If you're trying to extract the tarfile on the Sol7 system, you should be using tar xvf NOT tar cvf as you have given [ as in "when you try to tar cvf"].

Maybe even drop the 'v' option as you will alerady have a filist from when you made up the tarfile.

[barbedwirekiss.livejournal.com]

Oh, another thing. Make sure that you have consistent versions of tar on BOTH systems.

[reddragdiva]

I meant, of course, xvf, not cvf. Corrected. I always use the v as otherwise I wouldn't have been able to see the unreliable failure. And yes, I am now using consistent versions ...

[sweh.livejournal.com]

Long pathnames are incompatible between GNUtar and Solaris tar. That's normally the problem I have. So if you used GNUtar to build the archive, use GNUtar to extract it :-)

[reddragdiva]

Of course! It would be ENTIRELY FOOLISH to just ASS-U-ME that a fecking TARBALL is a fecking TARBALL, now. WOULDN'T IT.

[zey.livejournal.com]

Yep. It's one of the trips and traps of Solaris for a new Solaris admin who's used to Linux.

The other biggie is never use killall on Solaris. pkill will do what killall does on Linux. Solaris killall will drop your box in a fairly brutal way.

[blarglefiend.livejournal.com]

Also, you should make sure you use "p" in the extract command to get the permissions right.

And the reason not to use images instead is that you won't be able to get at the boot slice, which means you can't create an install server from the result.

(If anyone has figured out how to make that work, please tell me!)

The whole GNU/everything-else incompatibility thing is one reason I got into the habit of using cpio instead if I can't be sure there'll be GNU tar on the other end.