Strange tar error with --format=ustar: value 4294967295 out of gid_t range 0..2097151

Strange tar error with --format=ustar: value 4294967295 out of gid_t range 0..2097151

[Judy Anderson]

I need to send a collection of files to a Z/OS machine from a windows machine.  When we were on Windows 2000, we just used "pax".  But apparently Microsoft has discontinued pax in Win2003.  So we searched for a solution.  Cygwin tar SAID it would produce pax format files, but the Z/OS machine doesn't like them if they contain long file names.  However, tar will ALSO produce ustar format, and pax on the mainframe is able to read those.  So we were cooking with gas.

Except on my usual development machine, where I get the error:

E:\yduJ> c:\cygwin\bin\tar cf foo.tar --format=ustar foo
/usr/bin/tar: value 4294967295 out of gid_t range 0..2097151
/usr/bin/tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

It works FINE on the official build machine, just not MINE.  So I reran Cygwin setup and reinstalled and rebooted.  No help.  I started making all sorts of wrong guesses about this.  Eventually I discovered a directory on my machine which DID tar up.  Then I realized what was different:  I had made or edited at least one file USING EMACS in all the other directories.  Yep, added a file using emacs and the new directory couldn't be tarred either.

I went and got emacs version 23.1.1 from gnu hoping it would be better, but it's not.  Tar is version 1.21.

I figured out a workaround, which is to say --group=1 to specify groups, so I'm OK now, but it would be nice not to need that, since it's only for my development machine.  The build machine of course works only on the cvs checked out files and does not require this workaround.

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Re: Strange tar error with --format=ustar: value 4294967295 out of gid_t range 0..2097151

[Lee]

On 9/14/09, Judy Anderson wrote:
   .. snip ..
> Except on my usual development machine, where I get the error:
>
> E:\yduJ> c:\cygwin\bin\tar cf foo.tar --format=ustar foo
> /usr/bin/tar: value 4294967295 out of gid_t range 0..2097151
> /usr/bin/tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
>
> It works FINE on the official build machine, just not MINE.  So I reran
> Cygwin setup and reinstalled and rebooted.  No help.

Did you run mkpasswd and mkgroup on your machine?

i think an unknown user or group gets an id of 4294967295

Lee

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RE: Strange tar error with --format=ustar: value 4294967295 out of gid_t range 0..2097151

[Judy Anderson]

Evidence suggests I or someone else ran mkgroup and mkpasswd when I first got this machine.  The date on /etc/group is right for that.  /etc/passwd has stuff that includes me and other obviously-machine-generated info.

Emacs is not bothering its little head about cygwin, though; I'm launching it outside the cygwin environment.  I just tried launching it from a cygwin shell, I then get a group'd file.  The first file was created by an emacs launched from bash.  The second file was created by an emacs launched from the start menu:

e:\yduJ>ls -l foo.txt
ls -l foo.txt
-rwxr-x---+ 1 janderson mkgroup-l-d 34178 Sep 15 17:22 foo.txt

e:\yduJ>ls -l foo.htm
ls -l foo.htm
-rwx------+ 1 janderson ???????? 3561 Sep 15 17:33 foo.htm

The ??? file will be barfed on by tar --format=ustar.  Sadly, I'd like to use the start menu...  But maybe I can figure out how to make a shortcut that calls bash to launch emacs.   Thanks for the pointer.

-----Original Message-----
From: Lee [mailto:ler762@gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 1:09 PM
To: cygwin@cygwin.com
Subject: Re: Strange tar error with --format=ustar: value 4294967295 out of gid_t range 0..2097151

On 9/14/09, Judy Anderson wrote:
   .. snip ..
> Except on my usual development machine, where I get the error:
>
> E:\yduJ> c:\cygwin\bin\tar cf foo.tar --format=ustar foo
> /usr/bin/tar: value 4294967295 out of gid_t range 0..2097151
> /usr/bin/tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
>
> It works FINE on the official build machine, just not MINE.  So I reran
> Cygwin setup and reinstalled and rebooted.  No help.

Did you run mkpasswd and mkgroup on your machine?

i think an unknown user or group gets an id of 4294967295

Lee

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Re: Strange tar error with --format=ustar: value 4294967295 out of gid_t range 0..2097151

[Mark J. Reed]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 5:34 PM, Judy Anderson wrote:
> Emacs is not bothering its little head about cygwin, though; I'm launching it outside
>  the cygwin environment.

Then that's a completely separate emacs installation.  You should be
able to run the Cygwin one by just creating a shortcut to
c:\cygwin\bin\emacs-nox.exe or c:\cygwin\bin\emacs-x11.exe...

-- 
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com>

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