Intro bsdtar was adopted by FreeBSD a few years back to replace FSF tar I recall. FreeBSD-8.2/src/usr.bin/tar/COPYING: Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Tim Kientzle ... BSD terms ... I found numerous error return codes were ignored. I caught some & added if ... { printf ... exit(1) } http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/src/bsd/fixes/FreeBSD/src/gen/usr.bin/tar/ Jan 2011 I reported it via dmesg http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=154407 I did not have time for a complete code read through, but I would not be suprised if there were more return values ignored. My increased error detection returned me lots of breaks eg: cd /usr/ports/*category*/*port* ; make package that no one else on FreeBSD saw, as they all still used broken tar that ignored broken non existant things in package lists. Tim K. recently commited some fixes, asked me to revenue, but I havent had time yet to look at my fixes, & compare with what his fixes might be in https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/usr.bin/tar/ More importantly than compare mine with Tims, to check he got all of mine, I or someone should do a complete read through to check all return values are handled. The FreeBSD broken ports/ situation will improve when fixes to tar in Head branch of tar make it into next src/ releases of FreeBSD hopefully in 7.5, 8.3, & 9.0. ------------ FreeBSD: On FreeBSD-8.2: -r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 814840 Jun 24 02:32 /bin/pax* lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 6 Jun 24 02:34 /usr/bin/tar@ -> bsdtar -r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 63448 Jun 24 02:34 /usr/bin/bsdtar* lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 7 Jun 24 02:34 /usr/bin/cpio@ -> bsdcpio -r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 34040 Jun 24 02:34 /usr/bin/bsdcpio* -r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 376096 Aug 9 18:48 /usr/local/bin/gtar* Sources/ /usr/src/usr.bin/tar du -s 492 . /usr/src/bin/pax du -s 444 . /usr/src/usr.bin/cpio du -s 280 . /usr/ports/archivers/gtar ------------ From Bernhard R: > a friend on #netbsd just reminded me of the fact that netbsd's /bin/tar > is just a hardlink to /bin/pax, as is /bin/cpio, too.