mc 4.1 - tar: short read failed when restoring encrypted backup

[solorin]

Hi all,

First a word of appreciation for the daily feats of engineering that go into this tiny little wonder.

Don't know if my drive is getting old (only a couple months - but i do boot microcore every day - sometimes several times a day).

some details:
microcore 4.1 - the recent release.
booting off 4gb USB stick.
filesystem:FAT32 - coz i have to use the flash drive for other data-ferrying.
encrypted backup of home and opt

this afternoon, it keeps telling me.

[shell]
tar: short read failed
[/shell]

after i've typed in my password for decryption. the drive seems to be mounted correctly.
 
i've tried: redownloading the .gz and vmlinux files. for a fresh core.
going to one of my archived backups.

no cigar. i'm really at a loss here. any help would be appreciated.
thanks.

and thank you everyone for sharing.

kind regards,
solorin

[curaga]

dosfsck the drive? (dosfstools)

[solorin]

Hi,

Thanks for the quick reply.

dosfsck sez:

Code: [Select]

There are differences between the boot sector and its backup.

Then lists this differences as a comma seperated list in this format #:hex#/hex#.
And gives me the following choices.

Code: [Select]

1) Copy original to backup
2) Copy backup to original
3) No action

then it sez:

Code: [Select]

Reclaimed 2 unused clusters (8192 bytes).
Free cluster summary wrong (521092 vs. really 521094)
1) Correct
2) Don't correct

it's all a bit arcane to me. i tried reading some documentation, but my understanding of filesystems is pretty rudimentary.

2 questions:

1)are these drive errors associated with the original problem (tar not being able to read mydata.tgz.bfe)?
2) it's kinda vital I don't hose this drive. how should i proceed?

thanks any and all.

cheerio,
solorin

[gerald_clark]

I would suggest using dd to copy the drive to a work file.
Then try to recover the copy.

[curaga]

They show there's some corruption on the drive, which could have caused the issue with the backup.