Linux installer fails if there is a tape drive => Fixed in 1.6.4

[Andy]

Hi,

Linux installer (install.sh script) assumes that there is no tape drive on the host system. When there is one, root account typically has $TAPE defined:

bash-3.1# echo $TAPE
/dev/tape

This is where tar is looking by default. For some reason, installer does not use `-f' (which it should, to avoid ambiquity), when trying to untar itself, and the result is the following error:

bash-3.1# sh VirtualBox-1.6.2-Linux_x86.run 
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing VirtualBox for Linux installation........
VirtualBox Version 1.6.2 (Sat May 31 04:03:49 CEST 2008) installation
Removing previous installation of VirtualBox 1.6.0 from /opt/VirtualBox-1.6.0
Installing VirtualBox to /opt/VirtualBox-1.6.2
tar: /dev/tape: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
Error installing VirtualBox.  Installation aborted

Easy (and ugly) fix would be to add one line at the beginning of the script:

[ -z $TAPE ] || unset TAPE

Proper fix would be the one below:

bash-3.1# diff install.sh install.sh.fixed 
261c261
<     bzip2 -d -c VirtualBox.tar.bz2 | tar -t > $CONFIG_DIR/$CONFIG_FILES
---
>     bzip2 -d -c VirtualBox.tar.bz2 | tar -tf - > $CONFIG_DIR/$CONFIG_FILES
267c267
<         log 'Error running "bzip2 -d -c VirtualBox.tar.bz2 | tar -t > '"$CONFIG_DIR/$CONFIG_FILES"'".'
---
>         log 'Error running "bzip2 -d -c VirtualBox.tar.bz2 | tar -tf - > '"$CONFIG_DIR/$CONFIG_FILES"'".'
272c272
<     bzip2 -d -c VirtualBox.tar.bz2 | tar -x -C $INSTALLATION_DIR
---
>     bzip2 -d -c VirtualBox.tar.bz2 | tar -xf - -C $INSTALLATION_DIR
281c281
<         log 'Error running "bzip2 -d -c VirtualBox.tar.bz2 | tar -x -C '"$INSTALLATION_DIR"'".'
---
>         log 'Error running "bzip2 -d -c VirtualBox.tar.bz2 | tar -xf - -C '"$INSTALLATION_DIR"'".'

[Frank Mehnert]

Thank you for the report. Fixed in SVN.