When "configure" is run by a user with an UID bigger than 21bits, BSD pax 3.4 aborts when trying to create the conftest.tar test archive and leaves an empty or corrupted conftest.tar file behind. In the next step, pax tries to extract this incomplete or corrupted archive and
*this hangs the whole ./configure script forever* => I do not think "normal" is enough as a severity configure:NNN: pax -r <conftest.tar pax: Cannot identify format. Searching... pax: End of archive volume 1 reached ATTENTION! pax archive volume change required. Ready for archive volume: 1 Input archive name or "." to quit pax. Archive name > Note: GNU cpio 2.9 pretends to pass the test but it is a LIE: it silently truncates any big UID to its lower 21 bits. I don't know what can be the consequences of this lie. Some background --------------- - POSIX 1988 "ustar" format is defined with *fixed size* fields. There is notably a 21 bits limit (2097151) for the uid and the gid. - POSIX 2001 "pax" format (also sometimes known as... "posix") has additional attributes of unlimited length. However, as of today support for this format is scarce. GNU tar 1.20 claims support yet breaks on big user IDs. Despite its name, BSD pax 3.4 does not offer any 2001 "pax" support at all, see discussion here: <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=503860> Only a couple of non-portable formats ("star", "gnutar", ...) seem to actually support big user IDs today. I think there is currently a design issue in automake/m4/tar.m4 considering that a ustar archive should should *never* succeed when ./configure is run from a big user ID. ------------------------------------------------------------- Intel Ireland Limited (Branch) Collinstown Industrial Park, Leixlip, County Kildare, Ireland Registered Number: E902934 This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential material for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). Any review or distribution by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender and delete all copies.
