corrupted tar.gz archive - I lost my backups :)/:(

[Pegasus Mc Cleaft]

> -----Original Message-----

<SNIP>

> tar: Damaged tar archive
> tar: Retrying...
> tar: gzip decompression failed
> tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors.
> # gzip --test sr12292011.tar.gz
> gzip: data stream error
> gzip: sr12292011.tar.gz: uncompress failed # gunzip < sr12292011.tar.gz
> > archive.partial.tar
> gunzip: data stream error
> 
> It recreates something, but the most important files, which reside in
> subfolders of the given tar.gz archives are gone, i.e. the subfolders
> are empty.
> The gunzip strategy you mentioned yields the same as a regular tar -xvf
> file.tar.gz.
> 
> Pegasus, I have yet to try the pax(1) approach. I will let you know
> about how that went.

Hummmmm.. I'm not sure if pax will be able to help in this case. From the
looks of it, somehow the compressed data got corrupted - I don't think pax
will be able to deal with this any better than tar did. 

I wonder if there was a change in gzip (like maybe libarchive) between the
two versions of BSD that might be causing the problem. If I were attacking
the problem, I might try booting up off a 7.x bootcd and see if I can gzip
--test the archive from the usb stick. 

Peg