After Upgrading from samba version 3.0.14a to 3.0.23c it is no longer possible to backup files with size 0 byte using the smbclient tar-option. I created a tar-file using smbclient 3.0.14a. After Upgrading to 3.0.23c I created a second tar-file from the same share. It seemed that there were some files missing in the second tar file (created with smbclient 3.0.23c). Comparing the filelists with "tar tf" and "diff" showed that all files whith zero filesize were missing. So I tried somthing like: smbclient //server/share -U backupuser -E -d4 -Tqc - 2> debug.log | dd of=backup.tar For every missing file I found an entry in the debug output like: file <path/filename> attrib 0x80 getting file <path/filename> of size 0 bytes as a tar file <filename>skipping <path/filename> - initial read failed (file was locked ?) This happened to all files with zero filesize. There were no other "initial read failed" errors.
Created attachment 2973 [details] clitar.c:do_atar() - include empty files This is a proposed patch for this bug against samba-3.0.27. I've just got slightly bitten by this when my Windows file server disk died, and I had to restore backups created by smbclient in tar mode. I've tested this in my environment (Fedora 7 i386 Linux on 2.6.23.1 kernel).
Patch was shipped with Samba 3.0.27a. Closing out bug report. Thanks a lot for the patch!