From f2541c66cd25b855cf4b2871f1453aeaa6521b75 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Sergey Poznyakoff Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 21:11:03 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] (Synopsis): Document tar exit codes. --- doc/tar.texi | 34 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++------- 1 file changed, 27 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-) diff --git a/doc/tar.texi b/doc/tar.texi index 35e3959..279d7d9 100644 --- a/doc/tar.texi +++ b/doc/tar.texi @@ -1894,13 +1894,33 @@ All abnormal exits, whether immediate or delayed, should always be clearly diagnosed on @code{stderr}, after a line stating the nature of the error. -@GNUTAR{} returns only a few exit statuses. I'm really -aiming simplicity in that area, for now. If you are not using the -@option{--compare} @option{--diff}, @option{-d}) option, zero means -that everything went well, besides maybe innocuous warnings. Nonzero -means that something went wrong. Right now, as of today, ``nonzero'' -is almost always 2, except for remote operations, where it may be -128. +Possible exit codes of @GNUTAR{} are summarized in the following +table: + +@table @asis +@item 0 +@samp{Successful termination}. + +@item 1 +@samp{Some files differ}. If tar was invoked with @option{--compare} +(@option{--diff}, @option{-d}) command line option, this means that +some files in the archive differ from their disk counterparts +(@pxref{compare}). If tar was given @option{--create}, +@option{--append} or @option{--update} option, this exit code means +that some files were changed while being archived and so the resulting +archive does not contain the exact copy of the file set. + +@item 2 +@samp{Fatal error}. This means that some fatal, unrecoverable error +occurred. +@end table + +If @command{tar} has invoked a subprocess and that subprocess exited with a +nonzero exit code, @command{tar} exits with that code as well. +This can happen, for example, if @command{tar} was given some +compression option (@pxref{gzip}) and the external compressor program +failed. Another example is @command{rmt} failure during backup to the +remote device (@pxref{Remote Tape Server}). @node using tar options @section Using @command{tar} Options -- 2.44.0