Docker load and save: "archive/tar: invalid tar header"

linux docker redhat tar docker-image
bicster picture bicster · Nov 16, 2016 · Viewed 15.6k times · Source

I'm trying to import a Docker image into Docker on AWS Red Hat Linux (3.10.0-514.el7.x86_64) and am having problems with the error;

Error processing tar file(exit status 1): archive/tar: invalid tar header

This same image works fine on my local machine, and in Boot2Docker on Windows also. It's quite large (2.5 GB), but I've verified the checksum on the Red Hat Linux instance, and it's the same as from the source.

What could be wrong, or how I can resolve it?

Answer

Ostecke picture Ostecke · Nov 7, 2018

I wanted to add that the issue probably occurs because of the difference in behaviour of STDOUT between Windows and Unix. Therefore, using the STDOUT way of saving like:

docker save [image] > file.tar followed by docker load < file.tar

will not work if the save and load are executed on a different OS. Always use:

docker save [image] -o file.tar followed by docker load -i file.tar

to prevent these issues. Comparing the TAR files produced by the different methods, you will find that they have a completely different size (303MB against 614MB for me).

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