7zip fails to encrypt, says "E_FAIL"

[Adam Porter]

Binary package hint: p7zip

p7zip:
  Installed: 4.57~dfsg.1-1
  Candidate: 4.57~dfsg.1-1
  Version table:
 *** 4.57~dfsg.1-1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/universe Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

After running this command, 7zip fails:

nice -n 19 7zr u -mhe=on -mx=9 -p -i@$HOME/Misc/Linux/Backup/important-backup.list -x@/tmp/backup.large-media-files-exclude.list -x@$HOME/Misc/Linux/Backup/duplicity/exclude.list -x@$HOME/Misc/Linux/Backup/important-backup.exclude.list ~/importantbackup.7z | tee ~/importantbackup.7z.log

The output is simply this, without any other explanation:

7-Zip (A) 4.57 Copyright (c) 1999-2007 Igor Pavlov 2007-12-06
p7zip Version 4.57 (locale=en_US.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,2 CPUs)
Scanning

Creating archive /home/first/importantbackup.7z

Enter password (will not be echoed) :

System error:
E_FAIL

[Adam Porter (alphapapa)]

If, however, I remove "-p" so it doesn't encrypt the archive, compression proceeds normally.

[Bart Kroon (bart-kroon)]

Same for me

[Bart Kroon (bart-kroon)]

Relates very much to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/p7zip/+bug/122935 which is a bug about decryption.

[Ari (ari-reads)]

Same problem still present - ubuntu 8.10

[Ari (ari-reads)]

I found that in my case the problem is that the package "p7zip" does not support password encryption on file creation.

I then installed the package "p7zip-full" and then it started to work, even with the file-roller integration which was nice.

I wonder what is the point of having two packages (p7zip and p7zip-full) in the first place, this is all quite confusing.

But at least it worked

[Michael T (michaeltandy)]

7z a -t7z -mx=0 -v3g Monday-Wednesday.mpeg.7z Monday-Wednesday.mpeg

I encountered the same error message, and in my case it was caused because there wasn't enough hard disk space for the compressed file on the destination drive. Writing to a different drive, with sufficient space for the compressed file, fixed the problem.

Overall, I think it would be nice if the message E_FAIL was more descriptive.

[Adam J Richardson (fatman-crackmonkey)]

I'm also getting a cryptic E_FAIL from 7za, but I'm not doing any encrypting. Should this be a separate bug?

# dd if=/dev/sda bs=1024k conv=noerror,sync | pv | 7za a ./backup-sda.7z -si -bd

7-Zip (A) 4.58 beta Copyright (c) 1999-2008 Igor Pavlov 2008-05-05
p7zip Version 4.58 (locale=en_GB.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,2 CPUs)
Creating archive ./backup-sda.7z

Compressing [Content]/s] [ <=> ]

System error:
E_FAIL
6.83GB 0:57:38 [2.02MB/s] [ <=> ]

For now I'll just use gzip, but it would be nice to compress my raw disk images on-the-fly with 7z.

[Nicola Ferralis (feranick)]

I cannot reproduce on Lucid nor Maverick. Everything works as expected. Compared to previous releases, Lucid and Maverick use newer release of p7zip, compared to Hardy and earlier where the bug was first observed.

Therefore I'll mark this as fixed.