‘Archive contains obsolescent base-64 headers’ error when trying to untar

tarlinux
Written By devnumbertwo blog

the problem: you try to untar a file and you get ‘Archive contains obsolescent base-64 headers’ 

tar -xvf sometar.tar
./
./Server/
./Server/help/
./Server/help/enu/test.gif
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Archive contains obsolescent base-64 headers
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

One of the following can cause such behavior:

  • the file was not downloaded properly

  • after download, the file was not transferred to the target host using BINARY format

  • file was corrupted somehow during transfer

Download the file again and ensure you have done so in BINARY mode.

devnumbertwo blog
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