how to recover damaged tar files?

[Erik Alvarez <elinux@mailbreak.com>]

Hi, when trying to decompress a tar file I get this error. Can someone tell if there is a way to fix it or is the file lost?

rik@pogo:~$ tar -ixvf backup.tar 
BACKUP/
BACKUP/Rik/
BACKUP/Rik/Rogelio.doc
tar: Skipping to next header
BACKUP/Rik/xp-50/5,svq
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Archive contains `rik' where numeric mode_t value expected
tar: Archive contains `s' where numeric time_t value expected

tar: : Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Skipping to next header

tar: : Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Archive contains `\311S}D\301\002' where numeric mode_t value expected
tar: Archive contains `\b\000\000\000\263\030' where numeric uid_t value expected
tar: Archive value 207545706796100 is out of gid_t range 0..4294967295
U5\335D
tar: U5\335D: Unknown file type '', extracted as normal file
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: 411 garbage bytes ignored at end of archive
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

Thanks

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 - Erik Alvarez -
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