Tar: 0511-180 aaa.xfd is not a valid tar file type

System Administration
1

Hi,
On AIX 1 7 00CDDA774C00
when archivine we get

tar: 0511-180 aaa.xfd is not a valid tar file type

What might be the cause?
Is that file locked?
How to verify? How to make it free?
Thanks and regard.

2

are you trying to read/create/append .... ?

show the commands being used please.

3

Thank you.
Here it is:

$ nohup tar -cZf /`hostname`/xxx/xxx/yy.tar.Z * > /`hostname`/xxx/xxx/log_yy_$(date +"%Y%m%d").log &

Regards.

4

I don't understand the error message, but it seems to be the AIX native tar.
IMHO it does not understand the Z option.
Try to pipe the output stream (created tar data) to an explicit gzip:

tar cf - 2> /$(hostname)/xxx/xxx/log_yy_$(date +"%Y%m%d").log | gzip > /$(hostname)/xxx/xxx/yy.tar.gz *

.gz is the convention for gzip, .Z is for compress

5

Thank you.

6

documentation ....
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/aix/7.1?topic=t-tar-command

Restriction: Archives created with the -Z flag can be restored only on AIX 6.1 or later releases

1 Like
7

And the given document says for the Z option

Archives the Encrypted File System (EFS) information of encrypted files or directories.

This is unlike GNU tar where the Z option means a gzip compression.

8

Isn't it lowercase z in GNU tar?

-z, --gzip, --gunzip, --ungzip   filter the archive through gzip
-Z, --compress, --uncompress   filter the archive through compress
1 Like
9

Ah yes, thanks for the correction.

10

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