Hello, That means I didn't understand this message correctly (but I'm learning English for 2 years already).
My proposal is to change this message to make it more understandable. After your explanation I have another proposal: tar: warn: bdeb60x64/bdeb60x64.vmdk: File shrank while it was archiving. 7579713536 bytes was stored, the rest will be filled with zeros. On 03.12.2014 20:32, Sergey Poznyakoff wrote: >> This message is wrong because it doesn't say is my archive OK or not. > That depends a great deal upon what you mean by OK. It is OK in the > sense it can be extracted. The file in question was altered by a > third party and tar had to cope with that change. > >> In console I cannot see comes it on stdout or stderr (I use default >> shell in Debian 7). > It goes to stderr, as all warning and error messages do. > >> Actual result: >> >> user@hostname:~/vmware$ tar czf bdeb60x64_vmware.tgz bdeb60x64 >> tar: bdeb60x64/bdeb60x64.vmdk: File shrank by 7579713536 bytes; >> padding with zeros >> >> Expected result: >> >> tar: info: bdeb60x64/bdeb60x64.vmdk: File shrank by 7579713536 bytes >> because 3926 Mb of file's tail contains only zeroes; > You seem to be confusing the cause and effect. The fact that the "file's > tail" (as stored in the archive) contains zeros is caused by the fact > that it had shrunk by the listed number of bytes, and not vice-versa. > > Regards, > Sergey >
