[vox-tech] un-tar failing on large job

[Richard Burkhart]

Halloall;

I'm finally putting to use one of the dump-boxen that I've picked up
(166mhz, 64megs ram, 2gig drive, partridge in pear tree, etc.), for
experimenting with a Gentoo install.

And of course, nothing goes according to plan.  After formatting the drive,
setting up mount points, etc. the next step I'm on to un-tar the install
files onto the drive in what eventually will become the root directory.
This has failed 3 out of 3 times, using 2 different copies of the Stage3
tar.gz (100megs approx) and one version of the Stage2 tar.gz (50-80megs
approx).

The final time I tried this, tar finally gave me a list of what might be
going wrong:
  - bad compressed file (This is doubtful - the last time I pulled it down
from Gentoo, I ran an MD5 check to make sure the file was intact.)
  - bad hardware - either memory or cache hardware.  (I've got new SIMMS on
order--will try this soon.)

Those were the avenues I've checked so far.  Anyone have a suggestion as to
what ELSE I might look in to?

Danke