[Bug 1792930] [NEW] split does not break on error when reading from standard input

[Alexander Fieroch]

Public bug reported:

Hi all,

I found a bug in "split".
I want to tar some files but some of them have wrong permissions. tar puts out an exit code 2 "Cannot open: Permission denied". That is good because in my script I can catch this error and react to this.

$ tar -c -f /tmp/test.tar -C /media/testpath testfile ; echo $?
tar: testfile: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
2

Unfortunately my tar directory is too big to save it in one file on my
filesystem that I have to split the archive. But doing this "split" does
not get the error code 2 from standard input (tar) and does not break as
it should:

$ tar -c -f - -C /media/testpath testfile | split - ; echo $?
tar: testfile: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
0

In the end I got a tar file without files that have no permissions and
my script does not break because of error code 0.


----
Ubuntu 18.04.1
tar 1.29b
coreutils 8.28
----

Best regards,
Alexander

** Affects: coreutils (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1792930

Title:
  split does not break on error when reading from standard input

Status in coreutils package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Hi all,

  I found a bug in "split".
  I want to tar some files but some of them have wrong permissions. tar puts out an exit code 2 "Cannot open: Permission denied". That is good because in my script I can catch this error and react to this.

  $ tar -c -f /tmp/test.tar -C /media/testpath testfile ; echo $?
  tar: testfile: Cannot open: Permission denied
  tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
  2

  Unfortunately my tar directory is too big to save it in one file on my
  filesystem that I have to split the archive. But doing this "split"
  does not get the error code 2 from standard input (tar) and does not
  break as it should:

  $ tar -c -f - -C /media/testpath testfile | split - ; echo $?
  tar: testfile: Cannot open: Permission denied
  tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
  0

  In the end I got a tar file without files that have no permissions and
  my script does not break because of error code 0.

  
  ----
  Ubuntu 18.04.1
  tar 1.29b
  coreutils 8.28
  ----

  Best regards,
  Alexander

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