Arch Linux

banbh

Member

Registered: 2009-04-14

Posts: 8

[Partially Solved] Error with bsdtar and symbolic links

I'm trying to install a package (asymptote) from AUR but am running into an odd error.  During the extract phase I get errors like

asymptote-1.70/base/asy-keywords.el: Can't update time for asymptote-1.70/base/asy-keywords.el: Function not implemented
bsdtar: Error exit delayed from previous errors.

I found a post that may help: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=50750.  Do I really have to do this?

By the way, I too am running on a Linode (Xen virtualization).

Thanks,

Luis

Last edited by banbh (2009-05-24 00:22:13)

banbh

Member

Registered: 2009-04-14

Posts: 8

Re: [Partially Solved] Error with bsdtar and symbolic links

The problem seems to be caused by trying to untar an archive containing symbolic links, using bsdtar.  For example:

cd /tmp
mkdir foo
cd foo
touch a
ln -s a b
cd ..
bsdtar cf foo.tar foo
mv foo foo2
bsdtar xf foo.tar

gives

foo/b: Can't update time for foo/b: Function not implemented
bsdtar: Error exit delayed from previous errors.

My uname -r is 2.6.18.8-linode16.

Any ideas?  Is this a problem with bsdtar?  Can I use indicate that makepkg/pacman should use gnutar?

Thanks,

Luis

Last edited by banbh (2009-05-23 21:51:17)

banbh

Member

Registered: 2009-04-14

Posts: 8

Re: [Partially Solved] Error with bsdtar and symbolic links

So my inelegant solution is to use noextract, and then use tar in the build phase.

I'm still curious about what's going on with bsdtar.  Is it just on my machine?

Stefan Husmann

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2007-08-07

Posts: 1,391

Re: [Partially Solved] Error with bsdtar and symbolic links

Is your system clock okay? Do you use an unusual umask?

banbh

Member

Registered: 2009-04-14

Posts: 8

Re: [Partially Solved] Error with bsdtar and symbolic links

I have not got to the bottom of my problems with bsdtar and symlinks.  I suspect it must have something to do with either my configuration (derived from the Arch image provided by Linode) or running under virtualisation.

However, others might find my work-around useful, so I document it below.

I downloaded asymptote from AUR using wget ("wget http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/asymptote/asymptote.tar.gz"), unpacked it, then patched the PKGBUILD

$ diff -u PKGBUILD.orig PKGBUILD
--- PKGBUILD.orig       2009-05-23 17:58:47.000000000 -0400
+++ PKGBUILD    2009-05-23 18:00:49.000000000 -0400
@@ -11,9 +11,12 @@
             'used if present at compile time: freeglut, gsl, fftw')
 source=(http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/asymptote/$pkgname-$pkgver.src.tgz)
 md5sums=('1ded335bc63b662a6eb920a4c065706c')
+noextract=($pkgname-$pkgver.src.tgz)
 
 build() {
-  cd $srcdir/$pkgname-$pkgver
+  cd $srcdir
+  tar xzf $pkgname-$pkgver.src.tgz
+  cd $pkgname-$pkgver
   ./configure --enable-gc=/usr --prefix=/usr \
     --with-latex=/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex || return 1
   make asy || return 1

After that I simply did a "makepkg" followed by "sudo pacman -U asymptote-1.73-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz"

banbh

Member

Registered: 2009-04-14

Posts: 8

Re: [Partially Solved] Error with bsdtar and symbolic links

@Stefan Husmann: I don't think there is anything unusual:

$ date
Sat May 23 20:12:46 EDT 2009
$ umask
0022

In addition, in the minimal example of bsdtar failing, if I use GNU tar ("tar xf foo.tar") then it works without a problem (of course, you already know this, given the patch to PKGBUILD!).  I find it quite mysterious.

Earlier today I did a "sudo pacman -Suy" but it had no effect on the bsdtar problem.