File Roller reports error on tar.gz extraction of known good archive

[Michael Urban]

Binary package hint: file-roller

File Roller reports an error when attempting to extract IntelliJ Idea 10 tar.gz archive (available from jetbrains.com). However this archive extracts fine from the command line using tar xvzf with no errors, so the archive is presumably a valid tar.gz archive that is not corrupt. No details are given on the nature of the error. Just a generic error message that says "An error occurred while extracting files".

Ubuntu version: 10.10
File Roller version: 2.32.0

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: file-roller 2.32.0-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-27.48-generic 2.6.35.11
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-27-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia wl
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Mar 6 20:04:08 2011
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/file-roller
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release Candidate i386 (20100928)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_CA.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: file-roller

[Matthew Kennedy (lispnik)]

When run via a terminal session, file-roller reports:

    action_performed: ERROR!

[Marcel Stimberg (marcelstimberg)]

Thank you for your bug report, I can confirm this issue for the file http://download-ln.jetbrains.com/idea/ideaIU-10.5.RC2.tar.gz on Ubuntu 11.04.

A duplicate bug had been reported for this very file -- it seems to be a strange coincidence, so maybe there /is/ something wrong with the archive... The error does not occur if you first gunzip the file and then use file-roller, also if you gzip the tar file again, file-roller can extract the resulting .tar.gz file).

All that said: The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status. Thanks in advance.

[Matthew Kennedy (lispnik)]

The problem seems to be that the tar file in question includes duplicate entries (note the -d below):

> tar -tf ~/ideaIU-110.291.tar.gz |sort |uniq -d
idea-IU-110.291/bin/
idea-IU-110.291/help/
idea-IU-110.291/plugins/

With debug turned on, file-roller executes the following when extracting this archive through the GUI:

 tar --force-local --no-wildcards -v -p -xf /home/mkennedy/Downloads/test.tar -C /tmp -T /home/mkennedy/.cache/.fr-bkTWzC/file-list --
[Thread 0x7fffdee20700 (LWP 31423) exited]
** ERROR **
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
tar: idea-IU-110.291/plugins: Not found in archive
tar: idea-IU-110.291/help: Not found in archive
tar: idea-IU-110.291/bin: Not found in archive
[FR] fr-process.c:671 (start_current_command):
 1/1)

> cat /home/mkennedy/.cache/.fr-bkTWzC/file-list
idea-IU-110.291/Install-Linux-tar.txt
idea-IU-110.291/bin/
idea-IU-110.291/bin/
idea-IU-110.291/build.txt
idea-IU-110.291/help/
idea-IU-110.291/help/
idea-IU-110.291/lib/
idea-IU-110.291/license/
idea-IU-110.291/plugins/
idea-IU-110.291/plugins/
idea-IU-110.291/redist/

I would suggest that this is just a broken .tar file and move on, however file-roller calls tar to do the work, and tar standalone can extract this archive without problems. Also, invoking file-roller from command line also works fine for this archive:

> src/file-roller --extract-to=/tmp ~/Downloads/ideaIU-110.291.tar.gz
> echo $?
0

It succeeds because file-roller from command line executes this instead:

[FR] fr-process.c:671 (start_current_command):
 0/0)
 tar --force-local --no-wildcards -v -p -xf /home/mkennedy/Downloads/ideaIU-110.291.tar.gz -z -C /tmp --
[FR] fr-archive.c:944 (action_performed):
 EXTRACTING_FILES [DONE] (FR::Archive)

So I think this really is a bug in file-roller and that it should be robust enough to handle such an archive from the GUI.