tar Ignoring out-of-order file What Does that Mean?

[Jonathan McKeown]

On Tuesday 30 October 2007 16:02, Martin McCormick wrote:
> 	I need to modify the first installation image for a
> headless installation of Freebsd6.2. The file in question is:
>
> 6.2-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso
>
> 	Thanks to a helpful member of the list

[that was me - I'm glad I was of some help]

> 	I found out that tar works on unpacking these images and it
> mostly does on this one, but there is a complaint I get from tar
> that I haven't found on other images. If I do a
>
> tar tvf 6.2-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso
>
> Here is what happens while looking at the contents list:
>
> 0       44232 Jan 12  2007 RELNOTES.HTM lr-xr-xr-x  1 0      0
> 0 Jan 12  2007 stand -> /rescue lr-xr-xr-x  1 0      0           0
> Jan 12  2007 sys -> usr/src/systar: Ignoring out-of-order file
>
> -r--r--r--  1 0      0       22916 Jan 12  2007 RELNOTES.TXT

I haven't taken any steps at all to verify this, but just looking at
the error message it would appear that it's ignoring sys, which is a
symlink to usr/src/sys. I wonder if it's encountering sys, trying to
create the soft link and finding that usr/src/sys doesn't exist to be
linked to because it hasn't been unpacked yet? That may be the meaning
of the message about an out-of-order file.

> It appears that the entire image unpacks except for the
> ignored file. If one tries the extraction with
>
> tar xf 6.2-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso
>
> The complaint about the out-of-order file is the only indication
> that anything is wrong.

If it is indeed sys that's not being created, it's a symlink to a
directory rather than a file or link to a file. If the root of the CD
doesn't contain a directory called sys which softlinks to usr/src/sys,
it should be possible to correct the error by doing

ln -s usr/src/sys sys

in the root of the unpacked CD filesystem.

> 	In looking at the man page for tar, nothing jumps out at
> me  as to how to end up with the proper file structure that
> mkisofs can put back in to an image to put on a CDROM.
>
> 	My thanks for any suggestions as I may be needing to do
> one of these installs in a day or so and it would be nice to
> know that all the image is there.

I may have missed your deadline in that case - sorry, I've been on
holiday.

Jonathan