Installer fails to extract on Solaris SPARC 64bits

[jhllwy]

We are using IA 2009 SP1 with Hotfix J

When we invoke our installer on our Solaris machine
(uname -a
SunOS hostname 5.10 Generic_127111-11 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-V240)
We are getting the following errors:

Preparing to install...
./install_solaris.sparc64.bin: !: not found
Extracting the JRE from the installer archive...
Unpacking the JRE...
tar: ././@LongLink: typeflag 'L' not recognized, converting to regular file
tar: ././@LongLink: typeflag 'L' not recognized, converting to regular file
tar: ././@LongLink: typeflag 'L' not recognized, converting to regular file
.....
The included VM could not be unarchived (TAR). Please try to download
the installer again and make sure that you download using 'binary'
mode. Please do not attempt to install this currently downloaded copy.

However, if I go into the /tmp/install.dir.xxxx directory, I see the VM bundle has been unarchive and it seems to be fine:
/tmp/install.dir.2117/Solaris/resource # jre/jre/bin/java -version
java version "1.6.0_07-rev"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (IBM build 1.6.0_07-rev-b08 18_Aug_2008_08_20 solar
is sparcv9 (SR2))
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 10.0-b25, mixed mode)
IBM Java ORB build orbdev-20080816.00
XML build XL TXE Java 1.0.7
XML build IBM JAXP 1.4.3
XML build XML4J 4.5.4

I googled the @LongLInk error and everything I find says that the wrong version of tar is being used....

Has anyone seen this? or have any ideas.

[pv7721]

Well, the first link returned by Google has the solution: http://www.openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=394174

You need to use gtar, the GNU version of tar.

[jhllwy]

When you say "You need to use gtar instead of tar".. who is "you"??

Is it IA that is actually doing the extracting? or is it me when I build the VM bundle ?

[pv7721]

No, I mean to install on the target machine GNU tar instead of the existing tar, which IA uses when installing.

[jhllwy]

Thank you for the clarification. I went and looked for gtar and found it on the machine, but it was not in the System Path.

So two questions:

1) Would adding it to the System Path in front of the default tar be enough?

2) or do I need to "rename" gtar (by symbolic link or something) to tar, and then put it into the system path ?

I believe gtar is the GNU tar. I saw this reference in a google post as well.

[pv7721]

Well, I think that ideally would be that whatever you do, when you do a tar -version on the target machine you should get an output similar to this one:

$ tar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.16.1
Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software.  You may redistribute copies of it under the terms of
the GNU General Public License <>.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by John Gilmore and Jay Fenlason.

So I guess that 2) is your best option (maybe 1 should work too but only if GNU tar comes before the Sun Solaris tar)