Under Review

Please Describe how to create a compatible TAR ball

Document to be updated:

https://docs.sophos.com/nsg/sophos-firewall/19.5/Help/en-us/webhelp/onlinehelp/AdministratorHelp/BackupAndFirmware/ImportExport/index.html#exporting-and-importing-a-configuration


Performing a search shows there are a number of tar import failure messages.  Here are a few.

https://community.sophos.com/sophos-xg-firewall/f/discussions/138277/tar-import-fails/514532?focus=true

https://community.sophos.com/sophos-xg-firewall/f/discussions/145268/the-file-that-you-are-trying-to-import-is-not-a-supported-file-format-only-tar-file-format-is-supported

 https://community.sophos.com/sophos-xg-firewall/f/discussions/125593/edited-tar-file-not-compatible-for-import 

 https://community.sophos.com/sophos-xg-firewall/f/discussions/128915/the-file-that-you-are-trying-to-import-is-not-a-supported-file-format-only-tar-file-format-is-supported 

 https://community.sophos.com/product-documentation/i/feedback/sophos-xgs-import-doesn-t-recognize-generated-tarball 


I was able to get it to work but only after a lot of time spent. I had to export from one firewall, open with 7zip, edit carefully with Notepad++, save and drag/drop back into 7zip, replacing the existing Entities.xml.

I then took a look with VSCode. I added the Xml Complete extension and this shows where the errors in the files are.

I had tried the Red Hat extension but it has other dependencies that I didn't want to install.

I introduced a couple of errors into a file and see these:

^^ Hovering over the "2" in the left pane.

^^ Error indication on the tab, in the right navigation pane and the yellow squiggle under the text.

I was then able to correct the syntax and have a good file to import.

DavidSain
  • in reply to DavidSain

    Would the following Recommended Read article have helped in your situation? 
    - Sophos Firewall: Creating XML Objects

    Because Sophos Support does not officially support this, publishing official guidance on editing the XML becomes tricky. 

    I'd be happy to receive any feedback you have, to incorporate it into the article above. Please feel free to send me a private message if you'd like to discuss further. 

  • in reply to R@DocSupport

    Hi Rémi,

    There are a number of posts with people facing this issue. It took me a while to understand how to successfully edit the Entities.xml file. There was no issue with the original file, just my mistake when editing. But one has to be very careful and using a text editor (like Notepad) won't show mistakes which are easy to make when editing a large XML file. So maybe a primer on how to edit the xml file successfully, or an external link to a tool. I was successful when using Microsoft's VS Code application with an XML extension added.

    Thank you,

    David

  • Hello  ,
    I'm trying to understand the problem you've stated so that we can improve our documentation. 
    From your extensive testing, can you confirm that the TAR ball is not compatible because of an issue wit the original Entities.xml file?

    Thanks in advance,
    Rémi

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