Corruption

[Martin Stone]

Sounds like disk problems... but weird ones.  Have you fsck'ed lately?  Here's a 
really WEIRD suggestion... try creating an archive, then creating another 
archive, then seeing if you get the same error on the second one... if there 
just happens to be a bad spot on the disk where you're trying to create that 
archive, the first one will take up the space and the second one would hopefully 
be on a cleaner part of the disk.  If you get an error on the second one too, i 
dunno man... that's pretty weird.  Maybe leave those two archives on the disk 
and fsck?  If there is a file with a bad block in it (rather than a bad block in 
free space) I would think fsck would pick right up on it.

J.L. Coenders wrote:
> Ok,
> I did more extensive tests now.
> $tar cf - Mail | tvf -
> gives no errors.
> 
> $ tar czf - Mail | tar tzvf - 
> gives no error either.
> 
> For the mail and for other files.
> However, when I start writing to a file, things go wrong:
> $ tar tzvf <archive> 
> starts reporting errors and
> $ tar dzf <archive>
> starts reporting differences.
> 
> However, when I nfs the files to another computer, I can tar & gzip the files, 
> the test reports no errors and the difference test reports no differences.
> 
> But what is strange is that when I tar & gzip from the other computer over the 
> nfs-mount, it starts giving the errors again.
> 
> Any ideas?
> Jeroen
> 
> On Friday 30 April 2004 16:57, Martin Stone wrote:
> 
>>what happens when you do it without compression?  As a test, try:
>>
>>tar cf - Mail | tar tvf -
>>
>>Then, if that works with no problems:
>>
>>tar czf - Mail | tar tzvf -
>>
>>If that works, the only thing left that I can think of is serious disk
>>problems... let me know if those commands report errors or not though...
>>
>>J.L. Coenders wrote:
>>
>>>>Does the corruption happen with different sources to tar/gzip/bzip2?
>>>
>>>I am now testing some other sources. It seems to happen with large files.
>>>
>>>
>>>>Does while archiving in verbose mode appear any error message?
>>>
>>>No, the archiving itself does not give any messages. The testing does.
>>>
>>>
>>>>What are the commands you run?
>>>
>>>$ tar cvzf mail.tar.gz Mail
>>>or
>>>$ tar cvjf mail.tar.bz2 Mail
>>>
>>>For the testing I use:
>>>$ tar tvzf mail.tar.gz
>>>or
>>>$ tar tvjf mail.tar.bz2
>>>
>>>
>>>>Compression errors often occurs because of bad/damaged RAM.
>>>
>>>I do not seem to have other problems, which you would expect with bad or
>>>damaged RAM.
>>>
>>>Jeroen
> 
> 
>