tar/tests/star/README

This directory contains scripts for testing GNU tar using
star "test archives". The archives themselves can be obtained
from ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star/testscripts.

These tests are disabled by default. There are two ways to run
them.  The simplest is by `make check-full' command.  It requires wget
and GNU md5sum to be installed. If you don't have these utilities,
download the test archives manually and set the environment variable
STAR_TESTSCRIPTS to point to the directory where they reside, for
example:

	make STAR_TESTSCRIPTS=testdir check
or	
	make TESTS_ENVIRONMENT='STAR_TESTSCRIPTS=testdir' check

The file `quicktest.sh' is a separate test. It is never executed
within `make check' command, you will need to run it manually.
Please, carefully read section `quicktest.sh' below before running
it.
	
Following is a short description of the tests:

* gtarfail.at and gtarfail2.at

These tests require gtarfile.tar and gtarfile2.tar, respectively.
These files are POSIX compliant tar archives that were not accepted
by previous versions of GNU tar.

* multi-fail.at

Requires gnu-multi-fail-volume1.gtar and gnu-multi-fail-volume2.gtar.
These are two parts of a multi-volume archive that previous versions
of tar refused to read (at least, without -B option). 

* ustar-big-2g.at

Requires ustar-big-2g.tar.bz2. It is a tar archive containing a file with
the largest size that a historic tar implementation is able to understand.

* ustar-big-8g.at

Requires ustar-big-8g.tar.bz2. This is a test for reading an archive containing
files with the largest size that may be used with ustar (POSIX.1-1990)
format.

* pax-big-10g.at

Requires pax-big-10g.tar.bz2. It tests handling pax (POSIX.1-2001) archves
containing very large files (in this case -- 10 GB).

* quicktest.sh

This is a test for compliance to POSIX.1-1990 tar specification. It
requires two files: ustar-all-quicktest.tar and quicktest.filelist,
(they usually reside in star/testscripts directory), and `tartest' program
(also part of star distribution). The test must be run only with root
privileges, so it is a good idea to verify the contents of
ustar-all-quicktest.tar before running it.

If `tartest' is not in your PATH, use TARTEST variable to specify its
full file name. You may pass both STAR_TESTSCRIPTS and TARTEST
variables as command line arguments to quicktest.sh, as shown in
the example below:

  ./quicktest.sh STAR_TESTSCRIPTS=testdir TARTEST=/path/to/tartest


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