[Bug 687594] Re: tar crashes with SIGSEGV when used with --listed-incremental option and including the root directory

[Angel Abad]

@Marcel, sponsors are subscribed, so could you prepare a maverick-
proposed upload? This package is for main, so I have no permissions, but
if you prepare a good upload for proposed securely an Ubuntu main
sponsor wil sponsorize your changes. I you cant do please tell me, and I
can prepare SRU for main archive.

Thanks for your contributions>

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/687594

Title:
  tar crashes with SIGSEGV when used with --listed-incremental option
  and including the root directory

Status in “tar” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “tar” source package in Maverick:
  New
Status in “tar” package in Debian:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: tar

  I have a backup script which is doing incremental backups on NFS
  share. I am using an -g (--listed-incremental) option for that
  purpose. If the snapshot file does not exists (which means tar is
  doing full backups) everything works flawlessly. The problem occur
  whenever incremental backup has to be taken. Tar crashes immediately
  with Segmentation Fault error. I have tried to isolate NFS issues and
  copied the snapshot file to local storage and instructed tar to put
  the archive to local drive as well. The result was exactly the same.
  The problem occurs whenever the root directory "/" is included in the
  backup.

  TEST CASE:
    $ tar cpf /tmp/test.tar -g /tmp/snap / --exclude="*"
    $ tar cpf /tmp/test.tar -g /tmp/snap / --exclude="*"
    Segmentation fault

  After applying the fix in the linked branch, tar no longer segfaults. The patch is taken from this upstream commit:
  http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/tar.git/commit/?id=e21d54e8cd3d8026ad56f90cc6bde831106c2cb9

  The bug is a regression introduced in Maverick.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
  Package: tar 1.23-2
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.35-server 2.6.35.4
  Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-server x86_64
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Thu Dec  9 00:12:35 2010
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release amd64 (20101007)
  ProcEnviron:
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: tar

  == Regression details ==
  Discovered in version: 1.23-2
  Last known good version: 1.22-2ubuntu1