[Gllug] Tarball GUI

[Bruce Richardson]

On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 10:34:50PM +0100, John wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:38:10 +0100 Bruce Richardson
> <itsbruce at workshy.org> wrote:
> 
> > Do you still have older tarballs that you know you were once able to
> > see fully via Konqueror?  If so, can you see the full contents of
> > those? The answer to that question would begin to indicate where the
> > change might have occured.
> 
> I keep backups for seven days. In any case, the problem is not in the
> terballs, which contain al the backed-up files.

I fully understand that the files present in the tarballs - the point
was to see whether it is a change in the GUI functionality or in the
archival software.  This is simple diagnostic procedure.  Listen...

If, using your current GUI tools, you could see all the files in older
tarballs but not in the newest ones, that would indicate that something
about the archival software (possibly a change in format) that had
caused the problem.  On the other hand, if old tarballs that you could
once inspect perfectly with GUI tools were now only partially visible,
then this would prove that the problem is in the GUI tools.  Since you
do not keep backups for very long, the point is moot.

> > 
> > It would also help if you could post the full paths of both files that
> > are visible to Konqueror and those which are not, indicating which is
> > which.
> 
> I'm not sure how this would help. 

Because you have given us absolutely no information yet about *which*
files are not visible.  All you said was that some are visible, some are
not.  You need either to do more work yourself in investigating the
issue or present us with enough information.

Lacking enough information, I therefore had to ask you for more.  It
could have been the case that some particular types of files (e.g.
hidden files) were not being archived; having example paths would have
helped establish that possibility or ruled it out.  As it is...

> The listing for the tar (I ran it
> once with the verbose option just to check that stuff was getting put
> in the archive) is 7.31MB. It would take me forever to find the point
> at which files do not appear and I doubt it anyone would thank me for
> posting that to the list. In any case, what appears go so far down the
> list of files and what doesn't appear is after that. Why would looking
> at the paths help?

Finally.  This is the first time you have actually said that it stops
listing after a particular point.  *That* helps.  This would tend to
indicate that the GUI tools can only cope with a listing of a certain
size.  

There are things you can do to try and find out what that limit is.  You
could simply experiment with creating tarballs of smaller and smaller
sizes until the listing is complete.  You could also go to the bottom of
the GUI display and see the last file that is shown; grep can tell you
precisly which line number that file appears at in the listing.  You
might even find, by examining different tarballs, that the GUI display
always gives out at line N.  More likely, it's after N bytes of output
but if you can find out the line number at which the display fails for
each file, you can use head or split to extract those lines from each
file and measure the size in bytes.  If that size is constant, you have
a likely answer.

If it is a size limit issue with the GUI tools then this might be a new
cosntraint added in newer versions but it might simply be that the limit
was always there but your backups have now grown big enough to pass that
point.

-- 
Bruce

I must admit that the existence of Disneyland (which I know is real)
proves that we are not living in Judea in AD 50. -- Philip K. Dick
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