Comment 7 for bug 665210

Tried your steps both on ubuntu 10.04 and centos 5.5 (both x86_64):

Merged your branch with trunk, built against 5.1.53 (echo $? == 0), but tar4ibd still returns 255 on exit when trying with compressed tables.

root@dev302:~/xtrabackup_trunk# mysql -Bse "SHOW CREATE TABLE test.t3\G"
*************************** 1. row ***************************
       Table: t3
Create Table: CREATE TABLE `t3` (
  `a` varchar(20) DEFAULT NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED

root@dev302:~/xtrabackup_trunk# ./mysql-5.1.53/libtar-1.2.11/libtar/tar4ibd -c /var/lib/mysql/test/t3.ibd > out.tar
The file '/var/lib/mysql/test/t3.ibd' may not be InnoDB datafile or may be corrupted.
tar_append_tree("/var/lib/mysql/test/t3.ibd", "/var/lib/mysql/test/t3.ibd"): Input/output error
root@dev302:~/xtrabackup_trunk# echo $?
255
root@dev302:~/xtrabackup_trunk#

Could you please send me the details on environent you have tried a successful build?