[Bug 539814] Re: tar: futimens() with a bad file descriptor (AT_FDCWD) causes bootstrapping failure with kernels < 2.6.22

[Brian J. Murrell]

So, yet another bug that gets raised and "denied" because we are "too
close to release" and then just gets forgotten about even when
subsequent point releases are made.  Why does this seem to happen a lot
around here?

Is nobody actually tracking bugs and assessing them for inclusion in
upcoming (point) releases?  As soon as somebody denied this bug for
10.04.0 because it was too late, that same person should have added it
the tracker for 10.04.1 to make sure that it made it out on that
release.  Why does this sort of basic release tracking not happen around
here?

-- 
tar: futimens() with a bad file descriptor (AT_FDCWD) causes bootstrapping failure with kernels < 2.6.22
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/539814
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Status in Ubuntu Release Notes: Triaged
Status in “tar” package in Ubuntu: Fix Released
Status in “tar” source package in Lucid: Triaged
Status in “tar” package in Debian: Fix Released
Status in “tar” package in Fedora: Unknown

Bug description:
Binary package hint: tar

Bootstrapping Ubuntu Lucid with debootstrap is currently impossible with any kernel < 2.6.22, due to a bug in tar - specifically it fails because of a change to eglibc.

According to the debian bug report It seems that before eglibc 2.10.2-3, calls to futimens failed silently, however due to a patch made to eglibc 2.10.2-3, if futimens is called without a valid file descriptor, it now fails with an "Bad File Descriptor" error, because the corresponding utimensat() syscall was not added until kernel 2.6.22

Test Case:
1) Boot a kernel older than 2.6.22
2) Attempt to Bootstrap Ubuntu Lucid to any target.
The bootstrap will fail once it attempts to unpack packages with: tar: ./postinst: Cannot utime: Bad file descriptor

A patch is available (attached in launchpad) originating from the associated debian bug, that ensures that futimens is only called with a valid file descriptor.
A debdiff for 1.22-2 ( changing to 1.22-2ubuntu1 ) will be attached shortly.