Debian – Why is this archive failing to create symlinks

debiansymbolic-linktar

When I extract the archive Symfony_Standard_2.2.1.tgz using this command:

$ tar xzf /home/tomas/downloads/Symfony_Standard_2.2.1.tgz

I always get the errors:

tar: doctrine.php: Cannot create symlink to `../vendor/doctrine/orm/bin/doctrine.php': Operation not supported
tar: doctrine: Cannot create symlink to `../vendor/doctrine/orm/bin/doctrine': Operation not supported
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

Why is it failing to create the symlinks?

$ tar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.23
Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later .
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by John Gilmore and Jay Fenlason.

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.7 (squeeze)
Release:        6.0.7
Codename:       squeeze

Best Answer

BloodPhilia's comment said it all. I didn't consider the fact that I'm working on a VMware shared folder from a Windows machine with NTFS partitions. Extracting the archive anywhere on the virtual machine works fine.

Related Solutions

Linux – Why is “tar” trying to create an empty archive

What command are you using? I am able to create a tar archive of an empty directory just fine:

[jnet@Stan tmp]$ mkdir test
[jnet@Stan tmp]$ tar -cf test.tar test
[jnet@Stan tmp]$ ls -lh test.tar 
-rw-r--r--  1 jnet  wheel    10K Apr 20 21:58 test.tar

Tar: This does not look like a tar archive

You have not compressed so do not name the target file somedir.tar.gz -- call it somedir.tar
- this is not really relevant to your problem -- tar xvf should have worked nevertheless
Recheck your transfer (specifically if over FTP) is a binary one (and not a text transfer)
Finally do check that the files have actually transferred correctly
- for this, you might check source and target side file sizes
- or even better, match their MD5 sums on both sides (this will check point 2 also)

If you've checked the above points and the MD5 sums match on both ends, you should first try to check your split. So, does the join and tar-tf work on the source machine?

If your somedir is very large, try the work-flow with a small directory.
Use tar cvpf to get a simple tarball first, split and test after a rejoin.
Now, copy the split to your target machine as before and test after a rejoin there.
This should speed up locating your problem.

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