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From: Thomas Munro <[email protected]>
To: Sami Imseih <[email protected]>
Cc: Tom Lane <[email protected]>
Cc: Tomas Vondra <[email protected]>
Cc: Andres Freund <[email protected]>
Cc: Michael Paquier <[email protected]>
Cc: Andrew Dunstan <[email protected]>
Cc: Amul Sul <[email protected]>
Cc: Zsolt Parragi <[email protected]>
Cc: Robert Haas <[email protected]>
Cc: Chao Li <[email protected]>
Cc: Anthonin Bonnefoy <[email protected]>
Cc: Fujii Masao <[email protected]>
Cc: Jakub Wartak <[email protected]>
Cc: PostgreSQL Hackers <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: pg_waldump: support decoding of WAL inside tarfile
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2026 13:07:40 +1300
Message-ID: <CA+hUKGLMkv_fnGXzVRO8qbx5uHs-qMn151GTJYCfn9w1ZamGNg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAA5RZ0tt89MgNi4-0F4onH+-TFSsysFjMM-tBc6aXbuQv5xBXw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <[email protected]>
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On Fri, Apr 3, 2026 at 12:43 PM Sami Imseih <[email protected]> wrote:
> The --format=ustar has a limit of 2^21 (2097151) for UID/GID [1]
> and on my machine the UID is 10012663.
>
> So I found that one way to deal with this is to run the tar command with
> --owner=0 --group=0. As far as I can tell, the owner and group IDs don't
> matter for these tests, so maybe that is OK.
>
> @@ -1333,6 +1333,10 @@ sub tar_portability_options
>                 == 0)
>         {
>                 push(@tar_p_flags, "--format=ustar");
> +               # ustar format supports UIDs only up to 2^21 (2097151).
> +               # Override owner/group to avoid failures on systems where
> +               # the running user's UID/GID exceeds that limit.
> +               push(@tar_p_flags, "--owner=0", "--group=0");

Interesting.  BSD tar accepts those too, so here's an update to my
previous patch.

> While this fixes the test, I am now not sure what the broader implications are
> for --format=ustar for pg_waldump in the broader discussion?

I think users who have their own tar scripts will mostly be
unaffected, but a small minority will see the new error if they try to
use pg_verifybackup or pg_waldump, and they'll find their way to
--format=ustar, and then they might see the UID/GID error in their own
.tar production scripts, and find their way to adding those switches
too.  Seems OK?  Especially with a documentation note once we've
settle all of this.


Attachments:

  [text/x-patch] v2-0001-Improve-tar-portability-logic-from-ebba64c0.patch (2.1K, 2-v2-0001-Improve-tar-portability-logic-from-ebba64c0.patch)
  download | inline diff:
From a2c065fd5cee53bcde2ccaf92939737e8fc07f06 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Thomas Munro <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2026 12:03:56 +1300
Subject: [PATCH v2] Improve tar portability logic from ebba64c0.

* GNU and BSD tar both understand --format=ustar.
* Windows lacks /dev/null, but perl knows its local name.
* ustar format doesn't like large UID/GID values, so set them to 0.

Backpatch-through: 18
Co-authored-by: Thomas Munro <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Sami Imseih <[email protected]>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/3676229.1775170250%40sss.pgh.pa.us
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAA5RZ0tt89MgNi4-0F4onH%2B-TFSsysFjMM-tBc6aXbuQv5xBXw%40mail.gmail.com
---
 src/test/perl/PostgreSQL/Test/Utils.pm | 20 ++++++++------------
 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/test/perl/PostgreSQL/Test/Utils.pm b/src/test/perl/PostgreSQL/Test/Utils.pm
index 120999f6ac9..370acfcef7e 100644
--- a/src/test/perl/PostgreSQL/Test/Utils.pm
+++ b/src/test/perl/PostgreSQL/Test/Utils.pm
@@ -1328,21 +1328,17 @@ sub tar_portability_options
 
 	# GNU tar typically produces gnu-format archives, which we can read fine.
 	# But some platforms configure it to default to posix/pax format, and
-	# apparently they enable --sparse too.  Override that.
-	if (system("$tar --format=ustar -c -O /dev/null >/dev/null 2>/dev/null")
-		== 0)
-	{
-		push(@tar_p_flags, "--format=ustar");
-	}
-
-	# bsdtar also archives sparse files by default, but it spells the switch
-	# to disable that differently.
-	if (system("$tar --no-read-sparse -c - /dev/null >/dev/null 2>/dev/null")
+	# apparently they enable --sparse too.  BSD tar does something similar.
+	#
+	# ustar format supports UIDs only up to 2^21 (2097151).  Override
+	# owner/group to avoid failures on systems where the running user's UID/GID
+	# exceeds that limit.
+	my $devnull = File::Spec->devnull();
+	if (system("$tar --format=ustar --owner=0 --group=0 -c $devnull >$devnull 2>$devnull")
 		== 0)
 	{
-		push(@tar_p_flags, "--no-read-sparse");
+		push(@tar_p_flags, "--format=ustar", "--owner=0", "--group=0");
 	}
-
 	return @tar_p_flags;
 }
 
-- 
2.53.0



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  Subject: Re: pg_waldump: support decoding of WAL inside tarfile
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