Re: [OE-core] [PATCH] sanity: Require tar 1.35 or later on rhel9-alike distros

[Paul Barker <paul@pbarker.dev>]

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On Fri, 2026-04-03 at 14:06 +0200, Quentin Schulz via
lists.openembedded.org wrote:
> Hi Paul,
> 
> On 4/3/26 1:54 PM, Paul Barker via lists.openembedded.org wrote:
> > tar 1.34 (and possibly earlier versions) is unable to extract tarballs
> > containing read-only files with xattrs. This was fixed upstream, but
> > it's unlikely at this point that the fix will be backported to RHEL9
> > related distros (CentOS Stream 9, AlmaLinux 9, Rocky Linux 9). The issue
> > affects these distros specifically because they have selinux enabled by
> > default and this uses xattrs.
> > 
> > The specific failure we've seen is with the /usr/lib/udev/hwdb.bin file
> > installed by the systemd recipe - this file is chmod 0444. This leads to
> > the following error, typically during do_image_wic (shortened and split
> > to make it readable):
> > 
> >      subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command
> >      'tar --xattrs --xattrs-include='*' -cf - -S -C .../tmp/work/qemux86_64-poky-linux/core-image-minimal/1.0/rootfs -p . |
> >      tar --xattrs --xattrs-include='*' -xf - -C .../tmp/work/qemux86_64-poky-linux/core-image-minimal/1.0/tmp-wic/rootfs2'
> >      returned non-zero exit status 2.
> > 
> > That error message is likely to confuse users, and the fix is not
> > obvious. So, error out if tar 1.34 or earlier is present on affected
> > distros and recommend upgrading or using the buildtools tarball.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Paul Barker <paul@pbarker.dev>
> > ---
> >   meta/classes-global/sanity.bbclass | 15 +++++++++++++++
> >   1 file changed, 15 insertions(+)
> > 
> > diff --git a/meta/classes-global/sanity.bbclass b/meta/classes-global/sanity.bbclass
> > index b5d905399b73..2e486966a93b 100644
> > --- a/meta/classes-global/sanity.bbclass
> > +++ b/meta/classes-global/sanity.bbclass
> > @@ -551,6 +551,21 @@ def check_tar_version(sanity_data):
> >       except subprocess.CalledProcessError as e:
> >           return "Unable to execute tar --help, exit code %d\n%s\n" % (e.returncode, e.output)
> >   
> > +    try:
> > +        distro = oe.lsb.distro_identifier()
> > +    except Exception:
> > +        distro = None
> > +
> > +    if distro:
> > +        rhel9_alike_prefixes = ("rhel-9", "centos-9", "rocky-9", "almalinux-9")
> > +        rhel9_tar_minimum_version = "1.35"
> > +        for prefix in rhel9_alike_prefixes:
> 
> The commit log doesn't explain why that is specific to centos 9 and 
> derivatives.
> 
> Did CentOS break tar only for themselves, or is it the only distro with 
> that specific broken tar version or is it the only distro with that old 
> of a version of tar?
> 
> I'm asking because I am not sure we need to filter on the distro AND we 
> also probably should update the min version of tar listed in 
> documentation/poky.yaml.in in yocto-docs.

Hi Quentin, thanks for the feedback!

The issue exists in upstream tar, I'm unsure when it was introduced. It
was fixed for 1.35 [1].

We have only seen issues on the autobuilder with rhel9 related distros.
This is tracked by RedHat [2], but a fix is not expected as they don't
want to risk breaking any existing workarounds.

In our bugzilla, this is the remaining error in #16143 [3] after the
pseudo fixes, see comments 23 onwards.

[1]: https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/tar.git/commit/?id=0b74885e81b90d6ab4890b195dce99ca9109fe59
[2]: https://redhat.atlassian.net/browse/RHEL-158896
[3]: https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16143

Best regards,

-- 
Paul Barker


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