tar: live within system-supplied limits on file descriptors

[chaz/tar] / NEWS

diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index d6712d0fdf660691e242b49815bd0f868c8d3aeb..667fad83f76031f007b069c2ee733ffae33d92f2 100644 (file)
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-07-16
+GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2010-09-12
 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
 
 \f
@@ -11,6 +11,18 @@ time stamps to the full resolution.
 
 * Bugfixes.
 
+** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
+
+Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
+modified while tar is creating an archive.  In the new approach, tar
+maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
+file descriptors before, but it gracefully adjusts to system limits on
+the number of file descriptors.  The new checks are implemented via
+the openat, dirfd, fdopendir, fstatat, and readlinkat calls
+standardized by POSIX.1-2008.  On an older system where these calls do
+not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
+some cost in efficiency and reliability.
+
 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
 
 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and