When a database backup uses TAR compression, the file is uploaded as <name>.tar, but it is actually a gzip-compressed tar archive (a .tar.gz).

What happens:

  • file backup.tar reports "gzip compressed data"
  • tar -xf backup.tar fails in tools that don't auto-detect compression; you need tar -xzf
  • S3 storage (Cloudflare R2 in my case) stores it as application/x-tar instead of application/gzip, because the content type comes from the extension

Request: Use .tar.gz (or .tgz) as the extension for compressed TAR backups, so the name matches the content and restores work as expected.

Thanks!

Name gzipped TAR backups .tar.gz instead of .tar

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