Missing files in tar tape backup

[Steve Kirkendall]

In article <5139 at ns-mx.uiowa.edu> dhmadsen at icaen.uiowa.edu (Donald H Madsen) writes:
>My system uses Xenix 2.3.3 and I have had a subdirectory with a couple
>of files and it included a subdirectory with several files that existed
>for quite some time.  During that time several backups were made with
>the command     tar -cAe / 
>
>I now discover that those files never were on any of the archives.

This reminds me of a problem I had once on a Xenix system.  Tar was refusing
to backup a directory.  This directory was actually the root directory of an
extra mounted filesystem.

I has been a few years, and I may be remembering this wrong but... I think
another symptom was that "pwd" didn't work from within that directory or a
subdirectory.  Or maybe it did; its been so long...

The rwx permissions seemed to be enabled for all of the directories involved --
enabled for the superuser, anyway.  "Tar" was being run by the superuser.

The cause of my problem turned out to be: The directory upon which the
offending filesystem was mounted DID NOT HAVE THE "R" AND "X" PERMISSIONS
ENABLED!  The only way you can detect this is by looking at the permissions
of the directory *before* you mount the filesystem onto it.  When I turned
on "r" and "x" and remounted the filesystem, everything worked fine.

You never mentioned multiple filesystems while describing your problem,
but this is still something to watch out for.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Kirkendall     kirkenda at cs.pdx.edu      Grad student at Portland State U.