Tar ignore or fix checksum

Question

I have a archive backup.tar that was created with a nonstandard program a long time ago. I no longer have access to the original program. The archive is Not compressed (gzip). When trying to extract the archive files, I receive an Unexpected EOF error.

It's complicated, but I have reason to suspect that the only problem is with the the checksum. I want to extract it and get the files out. Is there a way (perhaps using cpio or pax), to ignore or fix the tar checksum, and extract the files?

Answer 1

I'd try the -i switch to see if you can just ignore and messages regarding EOF.

  -i, --ignore-zeros         ignore zeroed blocks in archive (means EOF)

Example

$ tar xivf backup.tar